With the motion approved by the Federal Council which took place last week in Rome, the Radical Party appealed once again to public opinion in order to guarantee our society the life of this group, unique in the panorama of international politics.

But contrary to what happened three years ago when we appealed to public opinion to get at least 10,000 people to enrol to prevent the closure of the Radical Party, (against its own wishes!), today instead, we must contribute to the growth of this new political entity which is transparty and transnational and which has shown an extraordinary vitality right from the first. It is sufficient to remember the enthusiasm with which Radical groups have been formed in Moscow, Prague, Yugoslavia and generally in the countries which are returning to democracy.

But a few hundred people in the world will not be able to do it alone. The objective of fifty thousand more members of the Radical Party before the end of the year, which was fixed by the Federal Council in Rome, represents the oxygen and the blood essential if this great organism which is so weak, so anomalous, so exposed to the most serious disease of real democracy - the impossibility for citizens to be sufficiently informed of events to be able to form their own opinion - is to manage to survive the necessary time it takes for the "medicine" to arrive. This "medicine " is essential, if people are to acquire, by an act of intelligence and political will, the chance to be known and judged. Yes, as we are deeply convinced that mere "ignorance", literally, the lack of knowledge of Radical proposals, is an obstacle to the transnational project, to the proposal for the political reform which we are trying to affirm, to encouraging people to have faith and to mobilize themselves.

But in the meantime...in the meantime it seems impossible to us that fifty thousand people do not exist, of any conceivable political orientation and with a taste for challenging ventures, who have the force to swim against the tide as they did for divorce, justice, the fight against extermination by hunger in the world and against all kinds of totalitarianism. It seems impossible to us that there might not be twenty thousand comrades among the one million five hundred thousand who have joined the Italian Communist Party who, by an act of generosity or from political interest would be ready to join this new international, nonviolent, federalist association. Are they so introverted that they do not realize that the chance for the success of their process of departure from the ideological communist reference point and their project to become a democratic party "tout court", should be sought essentially outside their traditional political world? The first objective of a thousand members before January 21 ha

s been easily reached. To ensure the life of this new transnational entity at least five thousand citizens must join the Radical Party by the end of February...

How many, of the minority who are lucky enough to know, will choose solidarity rather than silence?