ABSTRACT: Ernesto Rossi (1a) and with him Carlo and Nello Rosselli (2a), drew the revelation of the values which they devoted their entire lives to from the teaching of Salvemini (3a). It was a peculiar encounter of intelligences and characters which were particularly incline to complete each other. Their relations, their correspondence, their proposals and their achievements belong to the recent history of our civilization, and are the exemplary representation of the best part of Italy which has still not come out of the shade where it was placed by a political praxis which is often the opposite of what they hoped to see achieved.

Both the works of Salvemini and those of Ernesto Rossi abound with recollections of their friendship, which lasted, unaltered and fruitful, from 1919 to Salvemini's death. Their encounter occurred under the aegis of common origins which dated back to illuminism and empiricism, to the democratic tradition of the Risorgimento and particularly to Cattaneo (4a) (whom Salvemini recalled on his death-bed and whom Rossi compared to him during one of their last conversations). Under the influence of such factors, and constantly stimulated by the dialogue with Salvemini, Rossi evolved from an initial liberalism toward positions closer to an open socialism.

When Salvemini died, it became fully clear that Rossi, and Rossi only, had the strength, the cultural background, the polemical vein, the witticism, the repulsion for all forms of fanaticism, which were necessary to assume the heavy spiritual heritage of that great man and of the splendid tradition he had embodied. Rossi proved to be the right man, openly denouncing the corruption, the illicit interference in the government of the State, the malfunction of a state, the structures of which had passed unaltered through fascism.

Rossi was the natural continuator of Salvemini's sphere of interest, the direct heir of Cattaneo's method, who was equally removed from idealistic attitudes; a history of Italy different from the current one, more respectful of the truth and emancipated from those which Salvemini called "factories of obscurity" should closely reconsider these two men's lives and achievements.

This work confirms the extraordinary force, the clearness and the effectiveness of Rossi's prose, and reminds us of the debt which many have toward him.

(IL MONDO, 17 September 1957, republished by QUADERNI RADICALI, No. 11/12, January-June 1981).

When, after twenty years of exile, Salvemini returned among us in 1947, I quoted the words of Alcibiades on Socrates, in the Convito, in my foreword of the article (1) in which I welcomed him:

"He looks very much like one of those silenuses which can be found in sculptor's workshops, which the artists adorn with bagpipes or flutes and which, if opened, display the image of the gods".

Now that Salvemini has left us (2), I think of this passage again.

Like Socrates, Salvemini looked like an old silenus: a large, vigorously shaped head, broad forehead, made broader by his baldness; small eyes, which expressed benevolence and intelligence; snub nose; prominent cheekbones; wide mouth, with a smile that left uncovered a large row of teeth above his pointed beard; broad shoulders; stocky build; heavy step.

He was a man who came from the fields, not from literary circles.

And, like Socrates, those who opened him found the most precious of gods (3).

With the assistance of an astonishing memory and on the basis of an immense humanistic culture - which he has assimilated to the marrow - Salvemini grasped the relations between the remotest ideas with incredible quickness, and inferred the implicit consequences with a logical rigour which left no possibility of misunderstanding.

To him, clarity meant honesty. He always took great pains in highlighting the basic principles, the nonlogical premises of his reasonings. The interlocutor could even refuse them, proclaiming a different range of values. Salvemini was the most tolerant person on earth: he accepted the fact that others looked at the events from viewpoints opposite to his. However he did not discuss for the pleasure of chatting; he discussed to convince people or to be convinced, and he knew that two people cannot understand each other unless they speak the same language. To those who refused the premises of his reasoning he asked only to acknowledge what this refusal meant, and to fully draw the consequences of it, adapting their actions to their philosophy. (Salvemini's atheism, for example, did not prevent him from having the deepest respect for religious people, but in his view, to be religious it was necessary to prove it with one's entire life; and not just by mumbling prayers in a church).

If his interlocutor accepted - even only as a temporary hypothesis, as a working instrument - to attach the first ring of syllogisms to his same harpoon, he was taken to his same conclusions, to the same need that leads those who accept the postulates of Euclid's geometry to approve all theorems which it originated.

Salvemini's teaching was never dogmatic: he was concerned only of forming a critical spirit, more than enhancing the knowledge in the brains of his disciples. Like Socrates, he simply wanted to be an obstetrician who helps truth come out: that truth which everyone bears in himself.

Speaking to a young person, he never took advantage of his superiority to shut him up; on the contrary, he tried to find the good side in what the person said, to take him seriously.

- This is what you meant to say, is it not? - he asked. And even in the muddle of the most confused ideas, Salvemini succeeded in sorting out the good things. The young person recognized that that was good, and acquired confidence in himself. Gradually he learned not to accept any statement, even if it came from God himself, without analysing it with his own reason; he learned to wonder what the existing customs and institutions, even the most venerable, were for; he learned to knock on the surface of the words to hear what there was inside: chalk, live stone or vacuum; he learned how to define the meaning of words and to maintain in to the end of the conversation; he learned not to be ashamed of repeating one hundred times that he hadn't understood, even if all the others said they had. He learned to be nonconformist.

Even Salvemini knew that it is impossible to give up abstract and general theories completely; however, he tried to reduce their field of application as far as possible. He hated the makers of systems, who fly about on the trapeze of the "universals"; convinced of saying things that are as deep as they are incomprehensible to common people (4). The prototype of this type of philosopher, according to Salvemini, was Giovanni Gentile (5a).

"His brain is like a filter upside down - I found his old notes -. If you pour clear ideas into it they come out cloudy. If you ask Gentile a question and he answers it you can no longer even understand your own question".

Instead of representing People, Progress, Democracy, Revolution as the protagonists of History, Salvemini tried to understand what the single persons had thought: this or that person, sons of those given parents, raised in that given milieu, who had a given profession. Rather than speak of Freedom with a capital "F", valid in all times and throughout the world, Salvemini preferred to talk about the single freedoms: freedom of press, freedom of association, freedom of strike, in such year, in such country. He never set the proletariat as a whole against the bourgeoisie as a whole. He divided the bourgeoisie into groups, according to the diversity of interests, of power, of social role. And, contrary to the mythical idea of the "unity of the proletariat", he argued that the interests of the workers of the North were opposite to those of the workers of the South, that the interests of the workers of the country were opposite to those of the cities; that the interests of the workers of the major parasitical indu

stries were opposite to those of the workers who live outside of the area of privilege, and make common cause with the manufacturers and the capitalists of the industries where they work in, in order to better exploit the remaining population (5).

Salvemini preferred the analysis of practical problems, defined in such a way as to grasp all the details, to general theories, to "systems": universal suffrage, customs tax, equalization of taxes, school building, independence of the magistracy.

When we held a convention (6) in Rome last year of the "friends of Il Mondo" (6a) on the problem of the schools, he criticized the excessive vastness of the topic. It would have been better, he objected, to discuss the choice of the teachers or the organization of the exams, or the control of private schools. Discussing the reform of the school system in general was like discussing the social reform. Grasp all, lose all.

Moreover, the fact that people of different provenances could reach the same conclusions basing themselves on positivist theories or idealistic theories, on liberalism or socialism, on Christianity or laicism, had little importance to him. The important thing was that they agreed on practical solutions which could remain valid for some years on specific concrete problems. In the first period of our friendship, during a discussion on socialism, one day I told him I never could have joined the Socialist party because I considered groundless the theory of the surplus, on which Karl Marx had built his entire system.

- What do you care about the system? - Salvemini answered. - What you need to judge is whether the chambers of labour, the cooperatives, the socialist members of parliament have done and can still do something to improve the conditions of life of the poor. You have to judge socialism on this, not on ideologies. In Italy only about a dozen people have read the Capital, and very few have understood it, even if thousands of socialists swear on the "scientific" message of Marx (7).

On his return from the United States, in a diary in which every evening he summarized the conversations held during the day to inform himself of the political situation in Italy, on 5 August of 1947 he wrote:

"We discussed about socialism, Marxism and similar things. I said frankly that at this stage I believe only in the Criton of Plato and in the Speech of the Mountain. This is my socialism, and I bear it unexpressed in my thought, because I have the impression of violating it by expressing it. I think I can best express it in practical facts. Facing immediate concrete problems, following the directives suggested by the Christian morals, instead of wasting time on theoretic discussions on what democracy, Marxism, socialism, anarchy, liberalism are, should be and shall be; all the rest is nonsense. Wasting time on abstractions is vile, it is like escaping the commitments to an immediate action; it is the equivalent of becoming the accomplices of the maintenance of the status quo".

In the nationalist Italy of his time, a nuisance like Salvemini, who opposed statistics to folklore and wanted the scarce means available, instead of being used on heroic enterprises, to be used to build roads, waterworks, sewers, housing projects, to fight illiteracy, to help the lowest classes of the population to overcome their brute living conditions - a nuisance who proved, with unquestionable facts, that Libya was no promised land, as the newspapers owned by the steel manufacturers and by the Banco di Roma depicted it, but a "huge box of sand" in which our surplus labour would not be employed (8); a nuisance who, on his "Unità" (9), explained that the annexation of Dalmatia, requested by the generals of the Staff to increase the personnel, would have made the defence of the national territory much more costly and difficult...he was necessarily a "renouncer" - or rather, the "renouncer" par excellence.

The unpopularity which Salvemini reached in certain moments - especially in the years which immediately followed World War I - was never reached, I believe, by any other Italian politician.

The first time I noticed his odd figure in the street (at the time he wore a black cloak, out of fashion and which not even a cabdriver would wear, and a small hat in the fashion of the farmers of Apulia) was in 1919, while I was on a tram; a boor leaned completely out of the door of the platform to shout the insult "Renouncer!" at him.

This is the name by which Salvemini was known by a whole generation of "patriots"; even by those who had never read his name on "Magnati e popolani in Firenze" (10) and on "Storia della rivoluzione francese" (11).

Despite the severity of his moral principles, which admitted no compromise whatsoever to the advantage of his "personal" sphere and which left little space for resting and entertainment, Salvemini was a sociable, good-humoured, jolly-hearted companion. He laughed heartily, like a child, at a good joke.

Among the few letters by him which I have saved, I found two which he wrote to me in 1923 from England, where he had joined Carlo Rosselli.

"Rosselli and I" - he wrote on 23 August - have spent three delightful weeks in Hindhead. Rosselli was very successful with the ladies, but I think he never went beyond petty expenses. As for me, who am oldish, I cannot complain. We were competing for the fairest lady of the community: a prosperous Irish lady, a widow of war, between 35 and 40, truly a beautiful and delightful pianist and singer, who...served us at table, because the service was made by Cambridge and Oxford students, professors of sciences and literature, artists and similar ingredients. Therefore, Rosselli admired that lady very much, and so did I. Rosselli courted the lady with juvenile energy, while I limped in the rear guard. On the last evening, she invited us for a walk in the moonlight. Rosselli was aggressive, I was rather silent. In the end, the lady declared that she liked me better: an irreparable disaster! Rosselli left. I remained there alone with the lady. What happened next, in the solitude, in the moonlight, I cannot say...be

cause nothing happened. English women are like Italy: nothing ever happens and nothing ever lasts".

In a subsequent letter, after having said that "if it were not for his firm intention of not leaving Italy until forced to, and until he could say to himself - whatever happened - that he had been forced" instead of returning to Florence, where he clearly could not have resumed his life of study and teaching, we would have remained in London, maybe even to work as a "shoe-shiner or to play the clarinet in the street", he continued:

"You could argue: how could you play the clarinet? - Fear not, I answer. Here you can do anything you want. The worse you play a clarinet the more people pity you, like a poor wreck incapable of making a living, and throw a penny in the plate".

A few years ago, he had written a letter to "Il Mondo", in which he suggested, for the utilization of the real estate which already belonged to the fascist organizations, an anti-statalist solution which I found unfeasible.

It seems to me - I argued - that it is one of those proposals which the anarchists who were my companion in prison or in exile often made. Honest people, but they lacked the sense of history. I cannot say the same for you, who have been a professional historian for so long.

I - Salvemini said - do not lack a sense of history: what I lack is common sense.

We laughed together. But now, thinking back, I realize that while joking he was saying the truth, if by common sense we mean that which the conventional thinkers mean: "survive and think about your health". If he had had a bit of this common sense, Salvemini would not have struggled all his life against injustices and privileges; he would not have attacked his socialist comrades for the agreements they reached with the government; he would not have refused a seat at the Chamber, when he discovered that his electors had cheated to fight the frauds of the rival candidate; he would not have written "Il ministro della malavita" (12) while Giolitti (7a) was at the peak of his power; he would not have conducted, he who was an interventionist, the violent campaigns he conducted against Sonnino for his nationalist policy, and against D'Annunzio at the time of the enterprise of Fiume; he would not have gone to prison for writing "Non mollare" (13), he would not have resigned from professor at the University of Floren

ce when it became impossible to teach freely, he would not have spent so much time far from his country, which he loved so dearly, so as not to acknowledge the merits of the Man of Providence.

Until his death, Salvemini maintained his fine sense of humour.

In mid-August (after many months of illness, there were no hopes of saving him), I went to Sorrento, where had been staying for four years in the home of Lady Titina, the daughter of Ferdinando Martini (14). I wished to discuss a project with him, for the publication of his published and unpublished works. When I kissed him he roused himself with difficulty from the deep slumber caused by his blood poisoning. He could hardly sit on the bed with the support of his cushions. His face, emaciated by the fasting and the sufferances, was the colour of ivory. He spoke in a small voice, which I could barely hear by putting my ear close to his lips.

- This cruel heart doesn't want to give up - he told me. - With their cures, the doctors are prolonging my agony, not my life. I only wish they would put to to sleep so as never to wake up...

I outlined my plan for the publication: We will gather - I explained - about twenty volumes. he smiled slightly, and waved no with his hand. It wasn't worth publishing all that stuff. I asked him if he could remember any other works to complete my list.

- I've thought about it a lot, you know. I would have needed three more months to put everything in order.

He could remember everything exactly: titles, publishers, date of publication.

- I think you're forgetting something - I remarked. - There must be an inaugural lecture of yours at the university of Messina on the character and the meaning of history. I haven't read it, but they tell me it's important.

- No, no....a trifle - he answered in a whisper. -

Can you imagine....at the time I thought history was a science.

Four days before his death, Giuliana - the good, dear daughter of Lady Titina who assisted him for so many months with devotion - called me to tell me Gaetano was dying. I rushed to Sorrento to see him one last time. Over the last weeks he had taken only water. He was even more exhausted, and his voice had become impercetible. His eyes were closed, and from time to time he fell asleep. But when he awoke his mind was extremely clear. Maritza acted as interpreter, repeating his words out loud. His relations with his friends were - as usual - characterized by the uttermost sincerity. No one even thought of pretending he was going to die so as to console him.

He asked what the doctor has said:

- He found you heart was very weak, the pulsations can hardly be heard - Maritza answered.

- Good news - he said.

He asked that his coffin be carried by his youngest friends (15). He even remembered about Don Rosario, the good priest who had become his friend, and whom he had said goodbye to a fews days previously:

- If he wants to follow the funeral, let his come, but "dressed as a man".

He even talked politics.

- The socialists of the end of the century were good. They wanted to give bread to the poor people. Turati was very good. The communists (16) aren't good, they are dogmatic. The priests...well...it's the system that makes them what they are.

I thanked him for all the good things he had done during his life.

- Your will continue to do good with your works, which will live after you.

He smiled, shaking his head.

- After Cattaneo - I insisted - you're the one who wrote the most beautiful and most important things, I assure you.

After a long silence he said:

- I remember a thought by Cattaneo which I like very much: it says that the Anglo-Saxon peoples will unify the world. They alone have the necessary force and capacity. They will continue to fight among each other...but it is the only hope.

- Where did Cattaneo write that?

- Ask Sestan (17), he answered.

For every friend he had kind, special words.

Two pupils of his bent down to kiss him.

- What a lovely smile you have! - he said - What a pleasure to see such a wonderful smile.

And he continued to whisper compliments in their ears, which Maritza did not translate, but the face of the two girls was lit by his words. They laughed happily, and even he tried to smile.

When Armando Borghi (18), his old anarchist friend, kissed him, he said he had the soul of a child.

- You look as if you were twelve.

- This morning - I remarked - when you scolded him for swearing, you said he looked fourteen.

- Obviously I can't count any more. But I'm justified.

Borghi, on the contrary, could never count, all his life.

- You can't imagine - he repeated several times - how happy I am to die this way. Having a clean conscience is the only thing that matters...To die with a smile; this is what I'd like....Out of curiosity I'd like to know exactly when the passage occurs from life to death...I can't understand why people should be so afraid of dying...As far as friendships are concerned, I've been lucky all my life, and I'm lucky even with my death...I couldn't have a better, happier death than this, with all my friends gathered here...I'd like to hug you all...I'm at the end of my life...(19).

Like Socrates, Salvemini had a high concept of human dignity, and, like Socrates, he sought for justice for the same moral need and with the same passion with which he sought the truth; this is why he has been a teacher of life for so many young people; this is why he has been the fiercest opponent of fascism, from its very beginning.

In mid-November 1923, Mussolini illustrated his cabinet at the Chamber, with his "speech of the bivouac", treating the representatives of the opposition like scullery-boys which he could have sacked from one day to the other if he decided so. I was walking with Salvemini when the extraordinary editions with the speech were published. Salvemini bought the paper from a paper-boy, and stopped on the sidewalk to read it. As he read, his face became darker - until he could no longer bear it; he took off his hat and threw it violently on the ground. Then, ashamed of having lost his control, he picked it up and put it back on, all dusty.

- They let him say these things, without even interrupting it - he blurted out. - And tomorrow we will read the elegant answers of the representatives of the opposition on the paper...

He was terribly upset, as he left me on the door of the university. He left me without even saying goodbye.

After the assassination of Matteotti, while all the Holy Fathers of liberalism and socialism advocated prudence, so as not to disturb the ringleaders of the Aventino, who were taking agreements with the king, the pope, the generals, Delcroix, the dissident fascists, with the command of the carabinieri to put Mussolini into prison, Salvemini urged all his friends to undertake illegal action; if we were no longer allowed to write what we thought on the papers, then we were to publish it on the clandestine press - if we were no longer allowed to organize ourselves in the light of the day, then we were to create secret societies. Each of us was to do whatever he could, without adapting his action to the possibilities of a success: to maintain self-respect, not to become the accomplices of fascism, even with silence alone.

In Florence, Salvemini was the spearhead of the moral revolt against the "regime": he directed "Non mollare"; almost all the articles of this clandestine paper were his; most of the money used to print it were raised by him; he got hold of the Filippelli memorial on the assassination of Matteotti and the other documents which we published at the time.

For publishing "Non mollare" Salvemini was arrested and tried in July 1925 (20). After the first hearing, he obtained the temporary freedom, and took advantage of it to expatriate clandestinely in France. This was one of Mussolini's worst mistakes: to let his most determinate and intelligent of opponents escape. If Salvemini had remained three more months in Florence, they would have "eliminated" him in the night of blood of 4 October.

During the resistance against fascism, Salvemini was present in Italy with his works and with the action of the activists of "Giustizia e Libertà" which kept in touch with him. Even during the most terrible years, wherever you found a person willing to risk in the struggle for freedom he was always a follower of Salvemini, he had been a reader of "L'Unità" or had been influenced by his thought in one way or the other.

In July 1929, Carlo Rosselli, together with Lussu and Fausto Nitti managed to escape from the confinement of Lipari and join Salvemini in Paris (21). More than a disciple, Carlo was a spiritual son of Salvemini. Through Carlo, "Giustizia e Libertà" was mostly the work of Salvemini, Salvemini wrote the first program of Giustizia e Libertà; he made tours of conferences in America to raise funds for G.L.; on the magazines and papers of G.L. he published some of his best political essays; G.L. distributed clandestinely in Italy many of Salvemini's pamphlets (22).

In 1933 he was called to teach history at the university of Harvard (23) and settled in the United States; but he never ceased one moment to explain to the foreigners what fascism was, he never stopped drawing the attention of the public opinion of the free countries on the help which their governments gave a tyrannic government; defending the Italian people from the accusation of being unworthy of the political liberties which the other civil populations benefited of; insisting on the danger which the "regime " represented for all democracies and for peace in the world.

An army of propagandists, with the archives of the Roman ministries at their disposal, was not enough to counterattack this "exile" who, practically alone, followed all that was published in Italy to back his theses; books, newspapers, laws, statistics, parliamentary acts, company budgets, court sentences, work contracts, nothing escaped him. While Salvemini unmasked the lies of the fascist propaganda, I believe the fascists never proved the inexactness of his statements, which were always corroborated by accurate quotations, and put together with increadible patience and with the critical method which he had learned in his scrupulous archive work.

If - as I hope - his polemics in English language will soon be translated and published in Italy (24), they will represent the best evidence of the work carried out by this "antinational" to defend the honour and the future of Italy.

-------

NOTES

1. The article, with the title "Gaetano Salvemini", was published on "Italia Socialista" of 13 July 1974. In the same year Rossi wrote for "Il Ponte" (a. III, pp. 892-895) the note "How I met Salvemini".

2. Salvemini died in Sorrento on 16 September 1957.

3. The comparison between Salvemini and Socrates had already been made by Rossi more than once: writing to his mother from the prison of Pallanza, on 21 September 1931, he recalled the years in which he had met him every day, and it was "like being near the good Socrates, used to keeping his feet well on the ground, like the good son of farmers which he was, and wise because he understood people's soul, not because he knew many things", and writing to his wife from his penal house in Rome, on 26 August 1938, he had stressed the reference with special enthusiasm.

4. The same aversion for professional philosophers (which Salvemini always had, for example, distrusting the "universal confusion" which ensued from every proposal in which Croce "had a hand in": letter of 9 May 1949 to Ernesto Rossi, in "Lettere dall'America", 1947-1949, edited by Alberto Merola, Bari, Laterza, 1968, p. 282) was shared by Rossi, who wrote facetious verse from his prison on the illustration of the theories of Croce professed by his prison companion Riccardo Bauer.

5. They are the theses which Salvemini maintained in the years of the Giolitti government against the official guidelines of the socialist party and of the labour unions of the major industry.

6. The papers of the convention can be found in the book by Leopoldo Piccardi, Raffaello Morghen, Guido Calogero, Lamberto Borghi, Umberto Zanotti Bianco, "Dibattito sulla scuola", edited by Adofo Battaglia, Bari, Laterza, 1956. Rossi was the first to organize the conventions of "il Mondo" as, in a subsequent period, those of the "Movimento Salvemini".

7. Salvemini never denied his aspiration to a socialist solution of the Italian problems.

8. In 1914, with the title "Come siamo andati in Libia", Salvemini collected his own works and works of other against the African enterprise for the editions of the "Voce", with an introduction called "Perché siamo andati in Libia".

9. "L'Unità" was the periodical magazine founded and directed by Salvemini between 1911 and 1920.

10. "Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295" is the title of Salvemini's most important work as a historian of the Middle Ages. The book was first published in Florence in 1899(subsequently republished by Einaudi (Turin 1960).

11. "La Rivoluzione francese (1788-1792) is perhaps the best known of Salvemini's works; it was first published in 1905, and then republished several times (until the final edition: Bari, Laterza, 1954).

12. The well-known pamphlet "Il ministro della mala vita. Notizie e documenti sulle elezioni giolittiane nell'Italia meridionale", which, together with "Le memorie di un candidato", depicts the way in which the politician from Piemonte cheated at the elections in the Southern provinces, is now contained in the volume "Il ministro della mala vita e altri scritti sull'Italia giolittiana", edited by Elio Apih, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1962.

13. A photographic reproduction (Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1955 and 1968) has been made of "Non Mollare", published in Florence between January and October 1925, preceded by three essays by Rossi, Calamandrei and Salvemini.

14. On Salvemini's last years: Ebe Flamini, "Salvemini in Sorrento" in "Gaetano Salvemini nella cultura e nella political italiana", Rome, Edizioni della Voce, 1968, pp. 183-187.

15.Salvemini was buried in the cemetery of Sorrento. His mortal remains were transported in Florence in October 1961, where they received the homage of the president of the Republic and were interred in Trespiano, in the same part in which Carlo and Nello Rosselli were buried and where Ernesto Rossi is also buried.

16. Concerning the communists, from which, as from the clerical catholics, he had always wanted to distinguish himself, Salvemini had expressed less drastic words in the last years than the ones he proffered when he was dying, which were inevitably axiomatic. In the conclusion of one of his last essays ("Molfetta 1954" in the book "Scritti sulla questione meridionale", Turin, Einaudi, 1955, p. 659) he had, in view of a decade of future Italian history, imagined a political reshuffle as inevitable, whereby the communists would have joined the forces engaged in the solution of the country's problems.

17. Ernesto Sestan, pupil of Salvemini, collaborated with him in the publication of the four volumes of " Scritti storici e geografici" by Carlo Cattaneo (Florence, Le Monnier, 1957).

18. Rossi wrote a warn preface to a book by Armando Borghi, "Mussolini in camicia", Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche italiane, 1961, in which he recalled the old anarchist's friendship for Salvemini.

19.Salvemini's last words before dying, collected by his friends, written in stenography and controlled, can be found under the title "Parole di commiato" in "Il Ponte", a XIII (1957), n. 8-9, p. 1158.

20. Refer to the beautiful essay by Piero Calamandrei, "Il manganello, la cultura e la giustizia" concerning the events in Florence, where the fascists and the most reactionary part of the university milieu (the Piarist Ermenegildo Pistilli first of all) attacked Salvemini and on the trial which followed.

21. The evasion was described by Fausto Nitti in the book "Le nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione", Naples, Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1946, and with the testimony "La fuga da Lipari", in "Trent'anni di storia italiana" (1915-1945), Turin, Einaudi, 1961, pp. 199-202. On the episode see also Alberto Tarchiani, "L'impresa di Lipari" in the above mentioned volume "No al fascismo", pp. 73-126.

22. News and documents on the political exiles and especially on the activity of the members of "Giustizia e Libertà" are contained in the book by Aldo Garosci "Storia dei fuorusciti", Bari, Laterza, 1953. On the activity of Giustizia e Libertà in Italy before the "trial against the intellectuals" of May 1930, see the book by Rossi "Una spia del regime", Milano, Feltrinelli, 1955, and, for personal recollections, the essay "Fuga dal treno", in the above mentioned "No al fascismo". A re-edition of the twelve "Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà" which preceded the periodical directed by Carlo Rosselli was made by the Bottega d'Erasmo, Turin, 1959. Aldo Garosci illustrated the personal relationship between Salvemini and Carlo Rosselli in the two volumes of the book "Vita di Carlo Rosselli", Roma-Firenze-Milano Edizioni U, 1945.

23. Salvemini held the chair of history of the Italian civilization, which was established thanks to a donation made by the American fiancée of Lauro De Bosis.

24. What happened now with the publication of "L'Italia vista dall'America", edited by Enzo Tagliacozzo, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1969.

Translator's notes

1a. Ernesto Rossi (1897-1967): Italian journalist and politician.

Leader of Giustizia e Libertà (1929), he was arrested in 1930 for his antifascist activity. After the was he promoted the European Federalist Movement and was one of the founders of the Radical Party. His best known work is "I padroni del vapore" (1955).

2a. Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937): Italian politician. Together with Nenni he was the organizer of the magazine "Quarto Stato" (1926), and was exiled by the fascists to the island of Lipari (1927-28). Among the founders of the movement Giustizia e Libertà (Paris, 1929), he fought in Spain with the republicans (1936). He was assassinated together with his brother Nello (1900-1937) by terrorists of the cagoule on the order of the Italian secret services. An outstanding character of the Italian exiled antifascism, he achieved a synthesis of liberal values and socialist doctrine, illustrated in his work "Socialismo liberale" (1928).

3a. Gaetano Salvemini (1873-1957): Italian historian and politician. Socialist since 1893, he left the Socialist Party and founded the weekly "L'Unità". In 1925, together with the Rosselli brothers, he founded the clandestine periodical "Non mollare" and then was forced to leave Italy, joining the movement "Giustizia e Libertà" and organizing a journalistic battle against fascism. Among his works "Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295" (1899), "La rivoluzione francese" (1905), "Mussolini diplomatico" (1932), "Scritti sulla questioned meridionale" (1955).

4a. Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869): historian and politician. Founded the magazine "Il Politecnico" (1st series, 1839-44), spreading the scientific and technical knowledge for civil and social progress, and underlining the role of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism. Exiled in Switzerland (1848), he supported federalist-republican positions. As from 1860 he published the second series of the "Politecnico", intervening on the themes of the national unification (economy, transportation, scientific education).

5a. Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944): philosopher. After having collaborated with Croce at "La Critica", he joined the fascist party in 1923; minister of education from 1922 to 1924, he started a far-reaching reform of the school system. Advocate of a return to Hegel's idealism, Gentile proposed a reform of Hegel's dialectic, maintaining that only thinking as an act is dialectic and development. The basis of every education is self-education; any educational technique applied from the outside is secondary. "La riforma della dialettica hegeliana" (1913), "Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro" (1916), "Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere" (1917-22).

6a. Il Mondo: political, financial and cultural weekly magazine established in Rome in 1949 by Mario Pannunzio with lay and democratic characters. Ceased in 1966, it was refounded by A. Benedetti in 1969.

7a. Giovanni Giolitti (1842-1928): Italian politician. Liberal member of Parliament since 1882, minister of treasury with Crispi (1889-90), Prime Minister (1892-93), and then again from 1903 to 1913 with the exception of a few intervals (1905-6; 1909-11). During this period, he favoured economic development supporting the industry and tolerating a peaceful growth of the workers' and socialist movement, nationalized the Railways, extended the assistance to the workers and established the universal suffrage for men (1913). After the war in Libya (1911-12), to block a possible socialist victory, he reached an electoral agreement with the Catholics (Gentiloni pact, 1913), which was among the causes of his fall. He returned on the political scene in 1919. Prime Minister (1920-21), he underrated the growing fascist movement, convinced that he could reassimilate it in the forms of the liberal state; he took a position of open opposition only after the assassination of Matteotti (1924).