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APPENDIX
Extempore remarks by Anthony Campagna on salient phases of Italian civilization and recent Italo-American history.
Delivered in Whitefield, N.H., on October 2nd, 1947, at the invitation of the Rotary Club. Edited from stenographic notes of the meeting.
Mr. President, Officers and Members of the Rotary:
I am grateful for your very kind hospitality, for the opportunity of meeting so many of you in such a congenial atmosphere and for the privilege of speaking to you.
One of your laudable objectives being the promotion of international good will, you have asked me to talk about Italy. The theme is a welcome and vast one, but I shall limit myself to some of the high-lights, as I understand that this meeting is scheduled to close at 7:30 and…that is a good thing for you. (laughter)
Before approaching the subject, permit me to mention that I am not a newcomer to these mountains, although it is said that, according to New England standards, a newcomer is one whose family has lived in these States less than three generations. (laughter)
I admire and respect the deep-rooted feeling and pride for your native, historic soil, but I do not believe that the old exclusive frame of mind is generally true and, certainly, it is not true here tonight. My pleasure of being with you at this dinner-table is deeper than words can express.
In stating that I was not a newcomer, I had reference to the fact that I have been visiting the White Mountains with my wife and family for the last twenty-six or twenty-seven years. We wandered from one hotel to another and for a long time it was our earnest desire to have…
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…a place of our own, making it possible for our children and grandchildren not only to enjoy the invigorating mountain air and the thrill of these majestic surroundings, but to get acquainted with mother eart and the good people who live close to it.
We found in Whitefield the ideal summer home for our growing family. We are pleased with the comforts it offers and its setting; but, above all, we are happy to have met in this community so many kind, considerate, cooperative folks. Coming from a big city where, although good at heart, most of us are tense impatient, self-centered and inclined to show off, the contrast found here is most refreshing. Whitefield is indeed a friendly town. (hearty applause)
One of the reasons I personally love these mountains is the recollections they bring back of my own place of birth, a little town perched 3,000 feet high on a crest of the Apennines. There I went to a one room school, with earthen floor and barred windows. But, we had a saint of a teacher who will always live in my memory and affection. When still a shaver, I used to climb to a high spot, back of my own, and there wait for hours to watch with eager eyes one of the two daily trains swagger across a distant valley. I followed it longingly to the big cities and sea coasts of which I had a faint notion from elementary geography.
I can assure you that the people of my home town and thousands of country towns in Italy are no different than the people in New Hampshire. They are simple, hardy, religious and enured to hardship. However, the land is bled to death and insufficient for the dense population. It is cultivated from mountain tops to river edges. Along precipitous slopes you see chains of retaining walls supporting terraces, where some food is raised.
At busy times on the farms, women and girls, healthy and wholesome, work in the fields from sunrise to sunset and their songs fill one’s heart with joy.
People who can toil and sing, struggle and smile, must be of pretty good fibre. What is their background?
To quote Governor Smith’s famous expression: let us look at the record. Well, the record tells us that, between twenty-seven and thirty centuries ago, the pains along the lower Tiber and the adjoining hills, covering an area about one-half the size of New Hampshire, were inhabited…
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…by an alert, progressive, proud group of shepherds and farmers, rugged men and women, bound by strong moral principles and believing in their Gods, as they conceived them. After the founding of the Eternal City, they were known as “The Romans.”
With all their exceptional qualities, it seems that they had one weakness in their social structure. Their families had a preponderance of boys and not enough girls. A neighboring group had the reverse situation. The Romans made many overtures to establish marriage relations, but without success. So, one year the Roman organized a great festival and invited all their neighbors, who gladly accepted.
At the height of the celebration, there was a great stir and confusion. A mass elopement of Roman boys and neighboring girls was taking place. Imagine the upheaval and the many threats. But, human nature was about the same then as it is now. The parents finally acquiesced and a treaty of alliance ensued between the two groups. That marked the first step in the expansion of the Romans, who, from then on, moved East, South, North and West at a pace which no one could stop.
They possessed an extraordinary genius for organization and daring enterprise. They brought law, order and civilization wherever they set foot, and their influence is everlasting. Exuberant and ruthless in many respects, they were also just, generous and tolerant. Peoples of different creed or breed were allowed to live their own lives, without interference, as long as they paid their taxes and respected the Roman laws.
Of course, with over-expansion and relaxation of rigid discipline, the day of reckoning was due.
But, while the Roman power was still at its zenith, another power was taking root in the undergrounds of Rome – a great spiritual power which was to upset all the accepted ideas of masters and slaves, with the solemn declaration that all men were born equal in the eyes of God. Such a revolutionary doctrine, practiced in the very heart of the Roman Empire, brought tragedy and sacrifice of innocent blood. Still a Roman Emperor accepted the new faith and the first Christian church was founded in pagan Rome.
Unfortunately, the time came when avalanches of barbaric hordes engulfed and destroyed almost every trace of a glorious period of history.
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When the Roman Empire went down, the world was plunged into a black period of depression and dejection which lasted for eight long centuries.
But, after those eight hundred years of darkness, a light finally appeared, giving new hope to mankind. That new light, Gentlemen, dawned in Italy. It was a religious, artistic, humane and scientific revival, which spread with great force and rapidity to all countries, and we had what we call the Italian Renaissance and the Renaissance of Europe.
The Church in Italy had at great pains preserved the treasure of the past and we find the great libraries and the great universities of Italy throwing their doors open to everyone, regardless of nationality. The Italian Renaissance was not confined to art, but it embraced every branch of human talent.
DaVinci, to cite an example of versatile Italian genius, was not only a painter and a scientist, but an eminent engineer who envisioned a designed with great accuracy the submarine and the airplane of the future.
Salerno, recently bathed by American and Italian blood, was the seat of a famous medical school.
I could go on and on, but let me mention just one epoch making event, which is part of our own lives.
There was a time when the universal belief was that the earth was flat and that anyone daring beyond a certain limit of the sea would plunge into abyss. But, a few became deeply convinced that the earth was round. One of those few was a poor boy, born in Genoa about 1450. His parents were modest wool combers and weavers. When their son showed unusual eagerness to learn, they managed by stint and sacrifice to send him to a fine school He graduated at the age of seventeen and continued to help his parents in their humble trade, until the age of thirty, while dreaming of and planning the great things which were to come.
His dream finally came true and 455 years ago this month, he opened the gates to a new world which was to be the haven of humanity.
If the Italian race produced nothing else but Christopher Columbus it would be entitled to eternal gratitude.
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However, the discovery of America shifted the commercial center of gravity from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic Seaboard. Thus the countries bordering on the North Sea went out to pick the plums of the new world, while Italy was left to pick the last crumbs. Of course, it was their own fault and misfortune to be anchored to the past and not awaken to the changing realities.
Between sixty and seventy years ago, the Italian peasants started to come in great numbers and many of them were sent to carve the forests for the western railroads. Under a slavery contract they worked for six dollars a week for seventy-two hours of back-breaking labor. Later they helped to build highways, waterways, subways and skyscrapers. They submitted with “patience and fortitude” to all the blood sweating and vilifications, because they wanted to give their children the opportunities which they didn’t have themselves…and they succeeded. Today, thank God, we find men and women of Italian origin at the front line of every field of American life. They, with five million of their stock are useful , loyal citizens.
***
Let us come to recent history.
For more than thirty years the civilized world has been torn, from end to end, by two horrible wars.
What has been Italy’s part in this Armageddon?
When the first world war broke out, Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, with Germany and Austria as the other two members. It was a fictitious, unnatural alliance. The Italians had always resented the presumptuous claims of the Germans, who tried to dominate even their intellectual life. The Austrians had been the invaders and oppressors of Italy. The Treaty of the Triple Alliance call for mutual armed assistance for self-defense.
The war mobilization started on August 30, 1914 and on September first the German armies were crossing the Belgian frontiers, without knowledge on the part of the Italian Government. Still, Germany and Austria expected Italy to join them and much pressure was brought to bear. But, Italy remained silent and noncommittal.
During the first week of September, 1914, at three or four o’clock in the morning, while the German guns were battering down the concrete-ribbed…
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…Belgian forts, the Italian ambassador to France was calling on the French Prime Minister, with a delicate mission. I understand that, according to diplomatic usage, such a visit at that early hour in the morning could only be dictated by extreme urgency. No doubt, it meant declaration of war by Italy. But, as the French Premier was reading the message, his eyes filled with tears. The French Government was being informed in the strictest confidence that Italy would remain neutral.
I don’t know whether such an episode will ever be recorded in history books, but I learned of it through an old friend of mine who was then in an important Government Post.
It was a simple, silent act which changed the fortunes of war. At once, the French military staff pulled away troops and equipment from the Italian border along the Alps and transferred them by trucks and taxicabs to the Marne. The flood of the German Army was thus stopped twenty miles from Paris.
A few days later, Italy announced officially that it would remain neutral. The French and all liberty loving people were in ecstasy. High officials of the British Government and members of the British nobility paraded for hours in their tail-coasts ad silk hats before the Italian Embassy in London.
Germany and Austria made every effort and most flattering promises to keep Italy neutral. But the Italian people, true to their traditions, were on the side of the Allies, their feelings were irrepressible, and the Italian Government made the supreme sacrifice of declaring war against Germany and Austria.
The Italian Army was poorly equipped and there was even a lack of shoes for the soldiers. But, they jumped into the breach and performed heroic deeds on the snowy peaks and rocky precipices of the Austrian frontier.
The Italian troops were sadly short of heavy guns. They pleaded for help, but none came and for a long time they took a disastrous beating. They were pushed into the mud flats and swamps of Venice, where on of my own brothers was wounded and gassed. There, by a miracle of military genius and fanatic courage of rank and file, they reformed and broke the back of the Austrian Army. That was the beginning of the end. A week later the Germans surrendered.
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The smoke of battle had hardly cleared when, at the Peace Conference, Italy received, from its own Allies in war, one of the worst humiliations ever experienced by that noble little country.
The morale of the Italian people was shattered. Poverty, sorrow, and disillusion made the Italians easy prey to radical movements. Strikes and turmoil were daily occurrences. Factories were being seized by the workers. Farmers stopped tilling their land. Transportation and public services were thrown into chaos. The Italian flag was torn to shreds and burned in the public squares. Crippled veterans were affronted in the streets.
This was the picture as I saw it with my own eyes in the Fall of 1921.
Italy was going “red.” France would have followed the same course and all of Europe would have fallen under the Bolshevistic fallacy.
A small group of young men, mostly veterans, awakened to the imminent danger, banded themselves under the Old Roman symbol of Fasci, meaning Unity. Mussolini, a former rabid Socialist, was their appointed leader and they moved speedily to rescue their country from catastrophe.
When Mussolini took the reins of Government in March, 1922, he made no rosy promises. He demanded “work and discipline” and his people accepted the challenge, together with rigid restriction of liberty.
In a short span of time order was restored, everyone went back to work and, with very little bloodshed, a critical period was successfully closed.
All over the world, Mussolini was acclaimed as the savior of Europe. For twenty years he served his country well, uplifting its prestige and self-respect, reviving stimulating history. He bridged the sixty year chasm between Church and State. Religion regained influence. for the first time Italy was spiritually united.
But, beyond the Alps, an Austrian upstart began to boast and threaten and, when in 1934, he attempted to invade Austria, Mussolini stopped him in his tracks, single handed. The signs of the approaching storm were clear. Mussolini was a European at heart. He profoundly believed in European civilization. He was one of the few who saw in Hitler an Anti-Christian, a destroyer and a conqueror. Mussolini begged…
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…France and England to take some positive action, but they were as apathetic as when, in 1931, the Japs invaded Manchuria and the vigorous, angry protests of our Secretary of State were a “voice in the desert.” The Nazi and Japanese were preparing feverishly, while the democratic countries remained indifferent, unrealistic.
Mussolini was squirming on a picket fence. Meanwhile an old worry haunted him. Italy needed land for its dense population. Emigration to the U.S. had been stopped and Mussolini was desperate to find an opportunity for the surplus labor. Every nation with power had grabbed valuable colonies. Italy was one of the European proletarians. With sweat and blood they were squeezing a meager living from a few deserts in Africa, but the better land there had been denied to them. Fifty years earlier, fifteen thousand soldiers had been massacred in one day by the Africans, surreptitiously armed by the French. To avenge that crime and make a fresh try for a long sought breathing space, Mussolini went into the Ethiopian venture. He went too far and might have been checked by reasonable means. But, Italy’s former Allies, forgetting their pledges and their own piratical past, became righteous and holy. Italy was blockaded. Hitler for his own selfish purposes was the only one friendly and that is how Italy was thrown into the German clutches.
When the thunders of war were rumbling in 1939, Italy was peacefully making great plans and spending much money to prepare for a World’s Fair which was to be held in Rome in 1942. Mussolini, courted and flattered, knew nothing of Hitler’s diabolic schemes.
Even up to the eleventh hour, Italy’s pride could have been saved with very little and, perhaps, the conflagration might have been avoided. But, not a finger was moved by the great powers, until it was too late. Mussolini, reduced to the position of second fiddler, was envious of Hitler. Blinded by his vanity, he shoved his people into a war which they did not want.
The soldiers obeyed orders, but they did not fight. They had nothing to fight for. When America joined the Allies, Italian hearts were broken, because there is not a town or hamlet in the whole Italian peninsula where strong bonds of gratitude and affection have not always been felt for Americans and America.
When the American soldiers started to land in Italy, they received, with few exceptions, every possible help and cooperation. The first time…
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…in several years that the poor Italians saw smiling faces was when the American boys stepped on their soil. They were called not invaders but liberators. Fruits and wine were unearthed from deep cellars and offered to the American boys as tokens of thankfulness.
Here I want to point out something of deep significance. Notwithstanding poverty, distress and sorrow, the Italian people helped many who, hard to believe, were still worse off than themselves. During the war, taking a terrific gamble, the Italian people sheltered, fed and saved from concentration camps or extermination, more than forty thousand Jews who had escaped from German claws.
These are documented facts and only yesterday the New York Times published a report from Daniel Frisch, Vice President of the Zionist Organization of America, in which he stated among other things the following: “I have just returned from Italy and I feel impelled to share with my fellow Americans some of the experiences I had and information I obtained about the attitude of the Italian Administration and people toward refugees who sought shelter there before, during and after the war…There are few countries in Europe where the “D.P.’s” are as affectionately grateul as they are to the Italian people and authorities…The Italian people practiced tolerance in a spirit rarely to be found in our world of power politics…This explains the fact that even during the war as well as during the German occupation, the Italians did not cease to protect the many Jewish refugees, sometimes at very great risk.”
People with that kind of a soul deserve to be helped, but the Italians are not beggars. They want to help themselves.
***
What was the Italo-American participation during this last war? It may suffice to state that 1,100,000 boys of Italian origin served in the American Armed Forces. That is more than twice their percentage of population; because, while all the Armed Forces represented 9 percent of all the American people, the Italian contribution was more than 20 percent of its group. That does not mean that they were more patriotic than others. It may be due to the fact that we still have large families and, perhaps like the Old Romans, we have a majority of boys. They all served loyally and many with great distinction. One of them, Sergeant Basilone, received the Congressional Medal and he was recalled from the…
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…battle fields to help in War Bond Drives and to give talks to war workers. After three months, he insisted on going back to the Pacific Islands where, within a few days, he was killed in action. With their war contribution, the Italian descendant here have earned an honorable place in American history. I am humbly proud of it.
No doubt you wish to know what the present state of things is in Italy.
Several friends of mine, who have travelled there during the last six months, tell me that the Italians are all working, mending and rebuilding, making the best out of their limited means, this was confirmed by unbiased American reporters. A recently published statement conveyed the information that general production in Italy had reached 75 percent of prewar levels.
But, that is not what the Communists want. They thrive only on distress and disorder. The late outbreak of strikes in Italy seems to coincide with the vitriolic attacks directed against this country from Moscow, and that brings us to a cogent phase of current events, to which we must direct our earnest attention.
What has the Kremlin to sell the world? Nothing but despotism and slavery, while we deeply believe in the dignity and freedom of man, wrong out of centuries of struggle, blood and martyrdom.
The Russians are good people, but they were serfs before and they are slaves now. They only have changed masters. When the Bolshevist dictators and their henchmen talk of democracy it is a tragic farce. Their scribes, posing as lofty intellectuals, make a jest of our living standards. They ridicule our refrigerators, washing machines, automobiles, radios, telephone, etc., and they ignore the fact that those and other mechanical devices, provided by American industry and ingenuity, have lifted the yoke from the backs of workers and housewives, giving all of us a chance to enjoy some of the good things of life. With all the Soviet bragging and swashbuckling, a pair of shoes in Russia still costs $235 in equal American man hours of labor. Ford said the other day: “The average Russian can earn enough in a week to buy eight pounds of beef; the American, if he so desires, can buy eighty pounds, even at present prices. The Russian’s weekly wages in terms of milk he could buy is 15 quarts; the American’s 275 quarts.”
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Lately one of the native Russian claims is that they want to save America from capitalism or the capitalistic system. Now, I am afraid that we, ourselves, are negligent in boasting of our capitalistic system. That makes a good target for Russian sniping. Capitalism implies concentrated money power. Of course, we need managers for capital as well as for commerce, industry, hospitals, schools or churches. We know, but some forget, that capital is the sum and total of the toil, skill and self-denial of all the people. The largest reservoirs of capital are the saving banks, life insurance companies and even commercial banks, in which, to a small or large extent, we all have a stake.
Catch-words re dangerous. In my opinion, a more intelligent title for our economic and social order would be the “system of private initiative,” briefly outlined as follows:
The power to choose the work we do.
To dare, to risk, to lose to win,
To make our won career begin.
To know and feel that we are free.
To stand erect and not bow our knee.
To be not chattel for the State
But masters of our own fate.
That is the foundation of American Democracy which, with all its inevitable pitfalls, is the highest achievement of mankind.
But, we must defend that precious heritage with body and soul, we must keep alive the ideals on which this great Republic was founded. At times, even those of long American ancestry take things for granted. We must rekindle the American faith in our own hearts and in the hearts of our children, now more than ever. It we live up to that faith, sincerely and earnestly, if we are devoted to it and assert it, without fear or compromise, no power on earth can ever touch us…and American will march on…to her High Destiny.
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