Mattarella celebrates November 4th: reiterating the European way

Celebrating the end of the war together and paying homage to the fallen – all who have died – means strongly reaffirming that the path of war is preferable for developing friendship and collaboration. Which have found the highest expression in the historic choice to share the future in the European Union. While Sergio Mattarella utters these words on the stage of the Piazza Unit in Trieste, he turns his eyes to his left, where are aligned the representatives of the governments of the countries that fought alongside or against our soldiers from 1915 to 1918.

A look of gratitude, his. Because these presences constitute the most important legacy of what the Great War (with the fatal continuation of the Second) produced in the consciousness of the world. It is not a coincidence that the moral crisis provoked by the two conflicts gave birth to the area of ​​freedom and democracy that is Europe today. hui. The values ​​we must preserve, the implicit explicit ones. This goes well beyond the pacifism of fashion, the celebration of the centenary of November 4 that the head of state played yesterday in the metaphor of the city on the complexity and contradictions of the century.

His message is not resolved in anti-war ritual condemnations, but alludes to the problematic phase that the EU is going through, in trouble for centrifugal outbursts and sovereign tendencies. A phase in which, consequently, entrusts to the young people the memory of these dark moments … the commitment for an active memory which can consolidate and return the choices of peace, freedom, serene and respectful coexistence between peoples and peoples still more irreversible. This is precisely what has been lacking in the outbreak of the war in 14. A pbadage which sanctioned, in a missed measure, the incapacity of the European ruling clbades to compose their aspirations and their national interests in a peaceful and collaborative, rather than giving in to the flattery of aggressive nationalism that translated into the will of power, so-called selfish egoism and expansionist rhetoric. And here the President cites a brilliant synthesis of the spirit of those days made by Claudio Magris. Each country thought to give a little lesson to the nearest enemy, obtaining territorial or other advantages … no one could imagine that the war could be so terrible …. Gi, carnage. This is proven by the mourning accounts, with the sacrifice of more than ten million soldiers and a very large number – left unspecified – of civilian casualties.

All without the birth in Europe of the new order based on peace, harmony and freedom that many, with sincere intentions, had hoped for or desired. Plus: By plunging the ancient civilized nations into the barbarism of totalitarianism and laying the foundation for another, even more inhuman, world conflict. This is the lesson that, of course, does not detract from the valor and heroism of our armed forces and upset the drama of Caporetto. Mattarella honors them all, taking leave of a living united Italy, Republic and peace.