liberating Thousand and recounted the inspiring incidents of that day
fifty years and more ago. As I stood in that huge crowd listening to the
poet's words as they fell into the thirsty hearts of the people,--who
were weary with too much negotiation,--I realized as never before that
speech is given to man for more than reason. The words were not merely
beautiful in themselves: they flamed with passion and they touched into
flame that something of heroic passion in the hearts of all men which
makes them transcend themselves. The crowd sighed as if it saw visions,
and there rose instinctively in response the familiar strains of the
Garibaldian Hymn.

Italy had found its voice! The poet did not speak of "compensations,"
a little more of Trent and Trieste, of a more strategic frontier. He
stirred them with visions of their past and their future. He voiced
their scorns. "We are not, we will not be a museum, an inn, a picnic
ground, an horizon in Prussian blue for international honeymoons!...
Our genius calls us to put our imprint on the molten matter of the new
world.... Let there breathe once more in our heaven that air which flames
in the prodigious song of Dante in which he describes the flight of the
Roman eagle, of your eagle, citizens!... Italy is arming, not for the
burlesque, but for a serious combat.... _Viva, viva Roma_, without shame,
_viva_ the great and pure Italy!"

That was the voice which called Italy into the war: the will that
Italy should live "ever grander, ever purer, without shame." The poet
spoke to the Latin in the souls of his hearers.

* * * * *

He spoke again a number of times. In those feverish days when the