But these festas are no longer an ideal and a dream; All-Saint’s-tide, 1918, has sounded a note of triumph which resounds, it may be, in the world whither Dante is gone. Since the words above were penned, there has rung out at once the knell of the justly hated Hapsburg autocracy, and the joy-bells of _Italia Redenta_! The Piave, associated by Dante[33] with the grim thought of a humbled and degenerate Italy, harried by the outrageous violence of Eccelino da Romano and his minions; associated for us all to-day with nobler memories, as the line of defence where for long months and weary, patriots shed their blood like water to ward off from Italy horrors of brutality before which even Eccelino’s record—a byword in the Middle Age—reads like a little ill-timed horseplay: the Piave and the land behind it— ... Quella parte de la terra.... Italica che siede tra Rialto E le fontane di Brenta e di Piava, have witnessed wonderful events. That famous river of which D’Annunzio exclaims:[34] “It runs beside the walls and past the doors and through the streets of all the cities of Italy; runs past the threshold of all our dwellings, of all our churches, of all our hospitals. It safeguards from the destroyer all our altars and all our hearths”; it has witnessed a great victorious onrush that has swamped the very memory of Caporetto, just a year, exactly, after that day of disaster. And the dream of the Ravenna pilgrims of 1908 has come true. Trento and Trieste, “staked out,” as it were, by Dante’s verse as Italian, proclaimed Italian by race and speech and aspiration, are at last Italian in fact. _Evviva Italia Redenta!_ * * * * * POSTSCRIPT.—September, 1921, takes us back once more to Ravenna. Once more the short and narrow street that faces the “little cupola more neat than solemn,” is packed with an enthusiastic crowd. Once more the soul of Italy is concentrated in that exiguous space, offering votive gifts at the shrine. But this time the men of the Trentino and of the Dalmatian cities come as “Redeemed Brothers,” fused in the general life of the larger Italy. The Army gives a Wreath of bronze and silver, the Communes of Italy a Bell, the city of Rome a bronze Door. The sexcentenary of Dante’s birth in 1865 marked a great stage in the liberation and unification of Italy; the sexcentenary of his death, a still greater. May the Poet’s best dreams come true, as interpreted by the Prophet Mazzini, and Dante’s native land find at last that “peace” which she has been “seeking from world to world”—find it in the fulfilment of her God-given mission to the nations. II DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY Libertà va cercando, ch’ è sì cara Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. —_Purg._ i. 71, 72.