"Italy should be able to understand better than any other country the aspirations of the nationalities, since the history of Italy, now completed, is simply your history now awaiting completion.... No other people, before forming itself into a free and independent state, had to undergo so long an apprenticeship, so methodical an oppression, such varied forms of violence. Like generous Poland, Italy was shattered, partitioned by strangers, and treated for centuries as a _res nullius. The firm resolve of the Bohemian people to revive the glorious kingdom which has so valiantly stemmed the onset of the Germans is the same resolve which moved our ancestors and our fathers to conspiracy and revolt, that Italy might become a united state_. The impetuous and vigorous character of the Southern Slavs and the Rumanians of Transylvania already has led to the making of heroes and martyrs; and here they are met by the endless stream of our heroes and martyrs; who across time and space fraternise on the scaffold erected by their common enemy. "For your nations 'To be or not to be' is the inexorable choice at this moment. Here cautious subtleties are of no avail, nor the adroit reservations borrowed from diplomacy, nor discussions more or less Byzantine, 'while the Turk is at the gates.' The necessities are Faith and Work; it is thus that nations are formed." We have already mentioned that the U.S. Government identified themselves with the resolutions adopted by the Rome Conference. As regards Great Britain, Lord Robert Cecil made the following declaration on May 23, 1918: "Above all _I welcome especially the recent congress at Rome_, which has done so much to strengthen the Alliance of which Italy is a part. I believe that the congress was valuable for its wisdom and its moderation. I believe that it was valuable for the spirit of brotherhood which it displayed. But above all I welcome it because it showed that the Italian Government, as expressed by the speech of the Italian Prime Minister (Signor Orlando), recognise to the full that the principles on which the kingdom of Italy was founded were not only of local application, but extend to international relations. (Cheers) _Italy has shown herself ready to extend to the Poles, to those gallant Czecho-Slovaks, to the Rumanians, and last, but not least, to the Yugoslavs, the principles on which her own 'Risorgimento' was founded_, and on which she may still go forward to a greater future than she has ever seen in the past. (Cheers.) _That is a great work, and those who have borne any part in it may well be proud of their accomplishment_.