ITALIAN UNITY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 264, 29 March 1911, Page 5

ITALIAN UNITY

ENTHUSIASTIC REJOICINGS. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Rome, March 27. The King and Queen and Royal Princesses participated in the procession to the Quirinal and the Capitol. The streets were crowded, and there was a large assemblage in the senatorial hall, where Signor Nathan, the Socialist Mayor of Rome, delivered a speech eulogising the founders of Italy. FIFTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE. The year 1911 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the kingdom of Italy. On March 14, 18fil, it was proclaimed to the world by the Parliament assembled at Turin that Italy, after fourteen hundred years of disunion, had become a united and sovereign Power. Venice, to be sure, though she. had given richly of her blood and treasures to bring about the consummation, was still under the Austrian yoke; and the Roman States, politically in the last stages of decrepitude, were to be upheld by French bayonets for nine years more. But every true patriot knew that Rome and Venice could not long remain unnaturally outside the union. These fifty years of independence and union, now being commemorated, were preceded by another fifty years of selfsacrifice and devotion, of struggle and seeming failure. Until within a few years of final victory, says a recent writer, even the most sanguine hardly dared hope for success. These efforts were seconded and illuminated by the great genius of great men. Mazzini, Gioberti, Garibaldi, d'Azeglio, and Victor Emmanuel 11. were in the front rank of their times; while Cavour, the author of Italian unity, was, according to some authoritative historians and publicists, the greatest constructive statesman of the nineteenth century. No country, therefore, has a better reason than Italv for celebrating her birth, and certainly none is so well provided with means for making such a celebration memorable. There i.s shortly to lie opened a great international exhibition, which will be in two parts, one modern and industrial, at Turin, for three hundred years the seat of the dukes of Savoy and king* of Sardinia, and from ISO I to 18(14 the first capital of the kingdom of Italy; the other part, artistic, historical, and archaeological, will lie held at Rome, which has been, j IB7>>. the capital.