Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/52

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years have abundantly shown. We look with confidence to Italy's future; we know that she will speak again to the world. In Dante's "Roman Empire" and in Mazzini's "United States of Europe," there is an anticipation of what we are now calling the "League of Nations." And, in any such restored unity of civilisation, we may well believe that Italy—with her history and her traditions, her glorious past and her heroic present, her admirable advance in every sphere of intellectual and economic activity, and that genius in virtue of which the primato morale e civile has been justly claimed for her—is destined to give light and guidance to our steps along the road of peace and progress.

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