ABSTRACT: On the page which "IL MONDO" (1) offers every week to the Italian League for Divorce (LID), Marco Pannella addresses an appeal to his readers urging them to give financial support to the campaigns carried out by the LID and the Radical Party for the defence of divorce and for the referendums.

(IL MONDO, 21 February 1974)

("Throughout the campaign of the referendum, IL MONDO offers a page to the Italian League for Divorce, with the purpose of avoiding the LID from being prevented from continuing its campaign. We are glad to do so, despite the fact the opinions and positions of the LID do not always correspond to those of'Il MONDO'").

Dear friends from "Il Mondo", a quarter of a century ago, when I was barely twenty, I was discussing one evening with the then Averroës, Panfilo Gentile, in the newspaper's first offices in Via di Campo Marzio. As usual, I was enthusiastic about his article and about the final sentence, which read "Otherwise we will continue in our honourable mendicity of clerics", except that I wouldn't stand for that "clerics". "Lay", I insisted, with the stubbornness which was already typical of me, and which Averroës ascribed to my coming from the Abruzzi (like himself). That evening was spoiled, it was too animated: as it often happened during the following thirteen years until 1956, with Mario Pannunzio (2) and later also with Ernesto Rossi (3) in via Colonna Antonina, when the headquarters of "Il Mondo" were on the first floor and the Radical Party was on the third floor. Then came the sad years of the real quarrels, of the separations, in 1962 and 1963, as recalled by Arrigo Benedetti.

For a long period of time we had all felt united by a common pessimistic analysis of the Christian Democrat regime (once again, "Il Mondo" was the first to speak of "regime"). We separated at a moment in which the perspective of a Centre-Left seemed to authorize many hopes in a radical turnabout, with the possibility of a break in the political unity of the "Catholics" and not of the Left. Alas, things went differently.

Since then we have done what we could. Ten years ago, the political class viewed our first attempts to promote the fundamental human rights, from divorce to conscientious objection with irony and pity. Having no money, no power, no newspapers, to them we were sansculottes, "va-nus-pieds": anachronistic, pathetic and isolated; on top of everything, as nonviolents we are even incapable of throwing a stone to a policeman or to a tax collector. But fortunately things went as they did. A sign of alarm started ringing a few months ago, with the publishing of the newspaper "Liberazione", and the surprising coalition of democratic and liberal personalities, labour unions, all the forces that are not represented in parliament, the Republican, socialist and liberal Left on the project for the defence of divorce and the summons of eight more referendums to abrogate the corporate, clerical and fascist laws. Theatres and piazzas were full of people once again, from Trieste to Catania, from Rome to La Spezia. Once again

we were without money, without organization, without power. It was a known, premonitory sign.

The plan is that we should disappear: the operation is being prepared by the Right but also by the "Left". You, friends from "Il Mondo", are the first to show you feel that your freedom is endangered together with ours, or with the freedom of any other person, friend or opponent. Disagreing but nonetheless defending at all costs other people's right to express their ideas is the ancient precept which is the basis of Voltairean tolerance, the which is the basis of laicism. The refusal to live your own freedom corporatively if it becomes privilege faced to those who are deprived of it, is a civil and necessary virtue for there to be democracy and democrats. We want to thank you especially because this way you have shown the powerful that there are some risks in this operation other than us; and to all the others you will show that in order to be "companions" there should be no ideological proclamations but political actions. We thank you because you are helping us to keep alive hopes, and not destructive despa

ir, which this regime needs and which it deliberately provokes and fuels. We ask the public opinion, your readers, pro-divorce militants, radical friends and companions, not to underrate the lofty civil value as well as the actual political weight of this sympathy which is being offered us, the occasion to promote the common battle that it represents. Also, we wish you will represent an example for the many people who, while claiming to be our friends, have remained inactive.

Allow me to express a personal thanking, as a person who, without aspiring to any heredity, loyalty or merit, is glad to continue in his never-abandoned "honourable mendicity", coming to your offices once again like when he was a boy, and accepting reproaches and quarrels along with the rest. I consider it a good omen. The presidency of the LID will express itself here, next week, collectively and adequately. In the mean time, I wish you friends of "Il Mondo" a profitable work.

Translator's notes:

(1) Il Mondo: Political, cultural and financial weekly magazine established in Rome by Mario Pannunzio in 1949, with lay and democratic orientations. Ceased in 1966 and re-established in 1969 by Arrigo Benedetti.

(2) Mario Pannunzio (1910-1968): Editor (1943-47) of the newspaper "Risorgimento liberale" and (1949-66) of the weekly magazine "Il Mondo".

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

(5) Rinascita: political and cultural weekly magazine established in 1944.