Courage ever high and ever for liberty for justice and for peace among peoples This is the motto with which both people and sovereigns can face all obstacles and strive to reach the highest goals
I speak here without mandate but I speak as a man who has followed closely (sometimes as one of the lesser participants) every phase of the political renaissance of his country and who has in the supreme moments of our national epic felt the stirrings of the Italian soul
Gentlemen at this most solemn moment of my life before you citizens and representatives of this illustrious Norway whose example has taught all nations large and small how to achieve without violence the greatest civil victories - in view of the patriotic and humanitarian ideals in the name of which Italy has come into its third existence and in memory of the long list of heroes and martyrs who died on the battlefields in prisons or on the scaffold for those ideals - I give the solemn assurance as a seal to my speech that Italy will never fail in the commitment she made before the world to be once free to control her own destiny an element of order and of progress of pacification and of civilization in Europe Yes I am fully convinced that she will never fail for one can say of Italy what your great Ibsen said of your country