While in neighboring territories great monarchies possessing new permanent armies were consolidating the premature pacifism in our country left her once more wide-open to invasion as a result the richest and most beautiful parts of our peninsula came under the domination now of Austria now of Spain
Since we are deeply concerned with the present, with all its dangers and contradictions you may think it strange that I have talked to you about ancient Italy and about the Italy of the Middle Ages rather than about the place and purpose of today's Italy within the complicated framework of modern Europe
I do not regard a look at the past as fruitless, however for it was from the past that the forerunners and the first apostles of our revolution drew their inspiration. The idea of a legal system for the whole world pursued by the pacifists in Europe and America during both the last century and this one is to be found back in the history of Rome and in the minds of our greatest thinkers