Gabriele d'Annunzio, mature in years
and wonderfully youthful in spirit, takes up the national ideals of
the great master Giosue Carducci (who died before he could see the
dream of his life realized with the reunion of Trento and Trieste,
Istria and the Italian cities of Dalmatia, to the Motherland); and
becomes the speaker of the nation expectant in Genoa and assembled
in Rome to decree the end of the strain of Italian neutrality which
has to its credit the magnificent rebellion to the unscrupulous
intrigues of Prince von Bulow, and the releasing of five hundred
thousand French soldiers from the frontier of Savoy to help in the
battle of the Marne.
In D'Annunzio's "Virgins of the Rocks" the protagonist expresses
his belief that oratory is a weapon of war, and that it should be
unsheathed, so to speak, in all its brilliancy only with the definite
view of rousing people to action. Surely no man ever had a better
chance of wielding the brilliant weapon than D'Annunzio, in his
triumphal progress through Italy during that fateful month of May,
1915, when he uttered against neutralism and pacifism, germanophilism
and petty parliamentarism, the "quo usque tandem" of the newest
Italy.
Nor can we forget how Premier Antonio Salandra in his memorable
speech from the Capitol, expressed the living and the fighting
spirit of Italy, a spirit of strength and humanity, when he said:
"I cannot answer in kind the insult that the German chancellor
heaps upon us: the return to the primordial barbaric stage is so
much harder for us, who are twenty centuries ahead of them in the
history of civilization.
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