INTRODUCTION On the 10th of June, 1924, a man was kidnapped in one of the streets of Rome, taken away in a car .'and cruelly murdered. Two months later dogs found his martyred body with a rasp still sticking in his pierced b·reast. It was Giacomo Matteotti, the secretary of the Italian Socialist Party and the intellectual leader of the Opposition in the Italian Parliament. · There is no better test of a man's life than his death. And there is no truer evidence of how the victim fell than that given by one of his murderers, who confesse~ that Matteotti' s last words were :-"You may kill me; you will not kill the ideal. My children will be proud of their father. The workers will bless my dead body." These words, reported by one of his torturers, could not have been invented. · Giacomo Matteotti died at the age of 39. . He was brought up in corn/o.rtable surroundings and given an extensive education which made him acquainted with foreign languages ( especially English, which he acquired at Oxford) and foreign studies. He easily found access to a brilliant. career. in juridical science. This he gave up, however, in order to take his place in the -ranks of his party-the party of freedom and justice • of a higher degree than that afforded by present laws. Came the war. Matteotti stood against it, and, as a fighter against fighting, he was imprisoned for years in a dungeon in Sicily. After the war he gradually rose to prominence~ Unlike m.ost of his countrymen he was a man of cool, intellectual fudgment, controlling a fiery heart and a firm will. He was aware of his na+ion's emotional boundlessness and tried to avoid it. He was a man of fact, a teacher as well as a leader to his followers. He tau.ght them prudence and held them back from. risky adventures while never hesitating to da1'e himself. lX. Biblioteca Gino Bianco
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==