"Our country"” “

ALCIDE DE GASPERI died at Sella in Valsugana (Veneto) on 19 August 1954. Born at Trento, Italy, on 3 April 1881, De Gasperi is considered one of the founding fathers of Europe. The promoter together with Schuman and Adenauer of the first European Community, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), he dedicated himself to the rapid realization of the political and military integration of Europe through the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Political Community (EPC). It was he who inserted in the text of the EDC article 38 that made provision for the study and projecting of a European political authority. In May 1954 De Gasperi was elected chairman of the joint Assembly of the ECSC. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, we are publishing a passage of the speech given by Alcide De Gasperi in Rome in 1953, 13 October. Europe will exist and nothing will be lost of all that concurred to the glory and felicity of each nation. It is just in a larger society, in a more powerful harmony, that the individual may fulfil himself, and give expression to his own genius. As for me, I do not wish to found my feeling of being a European on the sole fact that I feel myself a citizen of Rome and a Christian. As far as Rome is concerned, undoubtedly she has been great; personally I see in her perhaps the highest achievement offered by the civil and political history of mankind; but Europe does not consist of Rome alone. How can I ignore, or put to one side, the element of the Near East, the Greek element, the element of the African coasts of the Mediterranean, the Germanic element, or the Slav element? Europe is not just Rome. Nor is Europe the world of antiquity alone. Europe is also the Middle Ages, the modern age, the past and present. All these elements are combined. None of them can be excluded or minimised. The voices of all the ages are harmonised in the European concert. They are fused together in a tradition whose roots are classical, but which is extended in profuse and vigorous ramifications, a tradition that inspires us by uniting us. On the other hand, how can we conceive Europe without taking account of Christianity, or by ignoring its brotherly, social and unifying teaching? In the course of its history, Europe has been firmly Christian; just as India, China and the Near East are what they have been at the religious level. How can Christianity be excluded from Europe? I know very well that free thought is also European. But who of us has ever dreamt of proscribing it in the free Europe we wish to build? What should be our watchword? In my view, union in variety, the variety of the natural and historical forces. We shall move in this direction if we move in the direction of a new European humanism, in mutual respect for traditions, in the pursuit of progress, and in the exercise of freedom. The fundamental historical element of European states remains the nation. No one could hope to fuse together the national characteristics of France and Germany into a politico-cultural whole. It is inevitable that the European Community be based on those characteristics that can be reconciled by the unity of our dominant conceptions. The predominant unifying conception is peace. Alcide De Gasperi