Do not speak to me of reactionary forces in Italy. Those who talk to me of a reactionary Government make me laugh, especially if they are immigrants or renegades from Trieste. Because if there is a country in the world where liberty is in danger of degenerating into licence, and where it is the inviolable patrimony of every citizen, it is Italy. There has not yet been seen in our country that which has been seen in France, where, as the result of a political strike, the Republic dissolved the General Confederation of Labour, locked up the leaders and keeps them still in prison. Nor have we seen that which has been witnessed in England, where so-called undesirable elements are sent over to the other side of the Channel; or in the ultra-democratic republic of the United States, where, in one single night, five hundred rebels were seized and sent over the Atlantic. If there is something to say, it is this: it is time to impose an iron discipline upon the individual and upon the masses, because social renovation is one thing—and this we are not against—but the destruction of the country quite another. As long as transformation is spoken of we are all agreed, but when instead it is a question of a leap in the dark, then we put our veto upon it. You will pass, we say, but it will be over our bodies; you will have to overcome our resistance first. _The Greatness of Victory._ Now, after this half-century of the life of Italy which I have thus roughly sketched, Trieste is Italian and the tricolour waves over the Brenner. If it were possible to pause one moment to measure the greatness of the event, you would find that the fact of the tricolour on the Brenner is of capital importance, in the history not only of Italy, but also of Europe. The tricolour on the Brenner means that the Germans will no longer descend with impunity upon our lands. Glaciers have now been placed between us and them, and on these glaciers are the magnificent Alpine soldiers who went to the assault of Monte Nero, who were sacrificed at Ortigara, and who have on their flag the motto “No passage this way.” (Loud applause.) Now it is a most important fact that Trieste has come to Italy after a great victory. If we were not so occupied with the daily material necessities of life and the solution of commonplace and banal problems, we should know how to appreciate all that which took place on the banks of the Piave and at Vittorio Veneto. An Empire was destroyed in an hour, an Empire which had outlasted a century, an Empire in which necessity had developed a superfine art of government which consisted in the eternal “Divide et impera,” according to the wisdom of Budapest and Vienna. This Empire had an army, a traditional policy, a bureaucracy, and had bound all its citizens together in a universal suffrage. This Empire, which seemed so powerful and invincible, fell before the bayonets of the Italian people.