To the People of Vicenza
By Benito Mussolini
Citizens!
You have given me a supreme honor by asking me to inaugurate this monument consecrated to the Italian Victory, which is already justly considered the best of its kind.
I am pleased to be among you. I am pleased to be able to pay tribute to Vicenza, to this noble Italian city that was always the bulwark of Venice and Italy in the struggle against the Habsburg Empire and which witnessed all the torments and all the glories from 1848 to the World War. And even when the airplanes were flying over in her skies, even when she felt the foreign threat approaching and the roar of the enemy'd cannon was clear, Vicenza's spirit was never broken!
I want to pay tribute to the mothers and widows of the Fallen, of our Dead, whom we honor not by remembering them so often, but rather by bringing their memory and teaching into our hearts.
I also would like to salute the mutilated—I am honored to be their comrade, and the veterans of the Great War who experienced the muddy, bloody and terrible suffering of the trenches.
I extend a salute and infinite gratitude to the representatives of the Italian Army.
It is the Army that, after centuries of division, servitude and decadence, has been able to gather all the best youth of Italy, merge them into a great powerful and complex organism and has been able—through many battles and enormous sacrifices of blood—to demolish and destroy forever one of the most powerful Empires that history has known!
It is impossible to be here without feeling overwhelmed by a deep emotion, nor can anyone stop in this place without thinking back to the whole epoch of our long, bloody and glorious war. You, dear citizens of Vicenza, have lived this war; you have lived it very intimately, you saw just how much effort the Italian people devoted to it, you saw how this war was truly fought by the whole people. Here, today, I want to remember all the soldiers of Italy: from those born in the high mountains, from which came those great, heroic, formidable Alpine battalions, the glorious infantrymen of Romagna, of Abruzzo, of Puglia, of Calabria, of heroic Sicily, of very heroic Sardinia. All this wonderful youth, at a given moment, left their home, family, did not ask why, because they did not need to ask, and went to meet a fate of sacrifice and death!
How should we honor—truly honor—those humble men who sacrificed themselves, how should we make the cult of Victory ever higher? Certainly this cult is expressed also through material works, certainly this square is destined to speak with the great eloquence of noble things to those of the present and of future generations! But victories are honored also and above all in other ways: we must become better, all Italians must be consider themselves soldiers loyal to their post, loyal to their assignment. Peaceful, orderly, intelligent work must become the fundamental norm of life for all good Italian citizens. We must respect laws and traditions, everything that represents the spiritual and fundamental element of the life of a people.
Just before I came out here I went into the church and knelt before the altar. That was not done to pay superficial homage to the religion of the State; it was the expression of an intimate conviction, for I believe that a people cannot become great and powerful, conscious of its destinies, without religion; unless it looks on religion and feels the need of it as an essential element of its public and private life. With this thought as motive for your actions you will see how the Fatherland is served above all in silence, humility, discipline, without many or great phrases but with unfailing daily works.
Citizens of Vicenza!
Once again I want to thank you for welcoming me and I want to thank you for the significant and meditative attention with which you have accepted my words. This means that the land was already prepared to receive them. Let us now clear from our minds all that can divide Italians from each other, and let us raise only a thought of purity and glory.
We salute the King with a devoted and reverent soul. We salute the living and fallen soldiers who defended the sacred borders of Italy in the closed mountain arch from the Stelvio to the sea. And we promise—in honor of their memory, today, tomorrow and always—to dedicate ourselves to making Italy ever greater, worthy of its past, and even more worthy of its future.
