Benito Mussolini, although taking into due account these two important events, destined not to be ignored by history, could and did rise above the circumstances of the moment. As a far-seeing statesman looking forward to resistance and final victory, he drew the attention of his hearers to a sane conception of the problems of foreign policy, not included in the enterprise of Ronchi, and, at the same time, heartening all Italians who were panic-stricken under the arrogant tyranny of Social-Bolshevism. I do not consider you, men of Trieste, as Italians to whom the whole truth cannot yet be spoken, because I think of you as among the best in the country, and your enthusiasm to-day has confirmed me in my opinion. The event, which had its counterpart in Rome on the 20th September 1870, was a magnificent picture in a poor frame, but upon this I am not going to dwell. _A Comforting Balance._ After a lapse of fifty years since the breach of Porta Pia, we must undertake the examination of our consciences. A nation like ours, which had issued from many centuries of disunion, which had barely achieved unity, had not then muscles strong enough to bear the weight of a world policy. A great Italian thinker[6] broke this tradition. In fifty years Italy has made marvellous progress. In the first place she has a sure foundation, and that is the vitality of our race. There are nations which every year scan the birth-rates with a certain preoccupation, because, gentlemen, it is just the want of balance in this sphere which produces the great crises—you know to what I allude. But Italy is not thus preoccupied. Italy had twenty-seven million inhabitants in 1870, she has now fifty million; forty million of whom live in the Peninsula, and represent the most homogeneous block in Europe, because, compared with Bohemia, for instance, where five millions of the Czecho race govern seven millions of other races, Italy has only 180,000 German subjects on the Upper Adige and 360,000 Slavs, all the rest forming one compact whole. And besides these forty millions, there are ten millions who have emigrated to all the continents and beyond all the oceans; there are 700,000 Italians in New York alone, another 400,000 in the state of San Paulo, 900,000 in the Argentine and 120,000 in Tunis. Footnote 6: Francesco Crispi. _National Discipline._ It is a pity that foreigners know us so little, but it is still more serious that Italians know Italy so little. If they knew her a little better, they would realise that there are peoples beyond her boundaries who are more retrograde than she is; they would learn, for instance, that Italy possesses the most powerful hydro-electric plant in the world.