While the Fascist patriots introduce to you the Italian nation under such an unfavorable light, I beg of you to allow me, an anti-patriot who has been torn from the living flesh of his home country, to vindicate before you the honor of my race.
While liberalism and democracy ruled Italy, crimes were followed up and punished, whatever the political opinion of the guilty parties. During the sixty years of the old free régime, crimes steadily diminished, though not so rapidly as might be wished in a civilized country. But everybody in Italy felt ashamed of them. Everybody endeavored to wipe out the dishonor of these crimes. In the sixty years of free government in Italy, not a single deputy was assassinated, not once an amnesty was granted to assassins of any sort. The murderers were always murderers and not heroes. They were put in prison and did not become prime ministers.
In the war against Austria in 1866, six years after the old despotic governments had been wiped out, a small skirmish in which the Italians lost no more than eight hundred men was enough to create the impression that the Italian Army had suffered irreparable defeat. During the World War, after sixty years of weak liberal rule, the Italian people had half a million men killed in battle, and yet they stood their ground for three years and a half until the Austrian Empire had been dismembered.
Even during the two years of so-called Bolshevist tyranny, the Bolshevists did not once sack an office of any association belonging to industrialists, agrarians, or traders. They never burned a single newspaper press. They never looted a single house belonging to a political adversary. Such deeds were introduced into the Italian public life by the Fascists.
It is well also to note that while the Bolshevist outrages were nearly always the work of the excited populace, the deeds of the Fascists are too often planned and carried out in cold blood by members of the upper classes who claim to be the torch-bearers of civilization.
The Italian nation has its own faults. It has its own errors. It has its own sins. But it ever remains a nation which is not unworthy of its noble past, which will be capable of outliving—we know it—its present shame, and will find again its own path towards the future. [Applause.]
Mr. McDonald: The next speaker, and the only other of our announced speakers today, is Dr. Roselli.
Professor Roselli is Professor of Italian Language and Literature and Chairman of the Department of Italian at Vassar College. He was formerly Attaché of the Italian Embassy at Washington, and he served with distinction during the War and was awarded the decoration of the Crown of Italy as well as the Italian Literary Cross. We are grateful to Professor Roselli for having spoken for us in Boston and elsewhere, and we are delighted to welcome him here today. Professor Roselli!
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