[Speech in the Roman Capitol on June 2, 1915.]
I address myself to Italy and to the civilized world in order to show
not by violent words, [cheers,] but by exact facts and documents, how
the fury of our enemies has vainly attempted to diminish the high
moral and political dignity of the cause which our arms will make
prevail. I shall speak with the calm of which the King of Italy has
given a noble example, [loud cheers, and shouts of "Long live the
King!"] when he called his land and sea forces to arms. I shall speak
with the respect due to my position and to the place in which I speak.
I can afford to ignore the insults written in Imperial, Royal, and
Archducal proclamations. Since I speak from the Capitol, and represent
in this solemn hour the people and the Government of Italy, I, a
modest citizen, feel that I am far nobler than the head of the house
of the Habsburgs. [Loud cheers.]
The commonplace statesmen who, in rash frivolity of mind and mistaken
in all their calculations, set fire last July to the whole of Europe
and even to their own hearths and homes, have now noticed their fresh
colossal mistake, and in the Parliaments of Budapest and Berlin have
poured forth brutal invective of Italy and her Government with the
obvious design of securing the forgiveness of their fellow-citizens
and intoxicating them with cruel visions of hatred and blood.
["Bravo!"] The German Chancellor said he was imbued not with hatred,
but with anger, and he spoke the truth, because he reasoned badly, as
is usually the case in fits of rage. ["Hear, hear!" and laughter.] I
could not, even if I chose, imitate their language. An atavistic
throwback to primitive barbarism is more difficult for us who have
twenty centuries behind us more than they have. ["Hear, hear!"]
The fundamental thesis of the statesmen of Central Europe is to be
found in the words "treason and surprise on the part of Italy toward
her faithful allies." It would be easy to ask if he has any right to
speak of alliance and respect for treaties who, representing with
infinitely less genius, but with equal moral indifference, the
tradition of Frederick the Great and Bismarck proclaimed that
necessity knows no law, and consented to his country trampling under
foot and burying at the bottom of the ocean all the documents and all
the customs of civilization and international law. [Cheers.] But that
would be too easy an argument. Let us examine, on the contrary,
positively and calmly, if our former allies are entitled to say that
they were betrayed and surprised by us.
Our aspirations had long been known, as was also our judgment on the
act of criminal madness by which they shook the world and robbed the
alliance itself of its closest raison d'etre. The Green Book prepared
by Baron Sonnino, with whom it is the pride of my life to stand united
in entire harmony in this solemn hour after thirty years of
friendship--[prolonged cheers and shouts of "Long live Sonnino!"]--shows
the long, difficult, and useless negotiations that took place between
December and May. But it is not true, as has been asserted without a
shadow of foundation, that the Ministry reconstituted last November
made a change in the direction of our international policy. The
Italian Government, whose policy has never changed, severely
condemned, at the very moment when it learned of it, the aggression of
Austria against Serbia, and foresaw the consequences of that
aggression, consequences which had not been foreseen by those who had
premeditated the stroke with such lack of conscience.
[Illustration: BARON SYDNEY SONNINO