A significant item in the story, which reveals the state of mind of the workers, is the following: tricolour flags, which were then frequently insulted by organisations of workmen under the thumb of the Socialist Party, flew from all chimney-tops during the occupation of Dalmine works, while in the workshops below the work itself throbbed cheerfully and briskly. I have often asked myself if, after the four years of terrible though victorious war in which our bodies and minds have been engaged, the masses of the people would return to move in the same old tracks as before, or whether they would have the courage to change their direction. Dalmine has answered. The order of the day voted by you on Monday is a document of enormous historical importance, which will and must give a general direction to the line taken by all Italian labour. The intrinsic significance of your action is clearly set forth in the order of the day. You have acted on the grounds of class, but you have not forgotten the nation. You have spoken for the Italian people, and not only for those of your class of metal-workers. In the immediate interests of your category you might have caused a strike in the old style, the negative and destructive style; but, thinking of the interests of the people, you have inaugurated the creative strike which does not interrupt production. You could not deny the nation after having fought for her, when half a million men have given their lives for her. The nation, for which this sacrifice has been made, cannot be denied, because she is a glorious and victorious reality. You are not the poor, the humiliated, the rejected, as the old rhetorical sayings of the Socialists would have you be; you are the producers, and it is in this capacity that you vindicate your right to treat the industrial owners as equals. You are teaching some of them, especially those who have ignored all that has occurred in the world in the last four years, that for the figure of the old industrial magnate, odious and grasping, must be substituted that of the industrial captain. You have not been able to prove your capacity for creation, on account of shortness of time and of the conditions made for you by the industrial leaders; but you have proved your good-will, and I tell you that you are on the right road, because you are freed from your protectors, and have chosen from among yourselves the men who are to direct you and represent you, and to them only you have entrusted the guardianship of your rights.