Excerpt from The Heart of the World: A Contribution to the Mission of the United States of America in the Modern World
The name of peace is sweet; the thing itself is most salutary. But between peace and slavery there is a wide difference. Peace is liberty in tranquillity; slavery is the worst of all evils - to be repelled, if need, not only by war, but even by death. -Cicero.
I have been in this country for over twenty-five years, and I take pride in the fact that my political adversaries in Italy, when they did not accuse me of being a friend of France - one of the men who, with Cavallotti, Bovio, Imbriani, and others, wished to see the ruin of my motherland, in the interest of the great nation which proclaimed the rights of men - they nicknamed me the American, on account of my love for the United States of America, and of my worship for Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. I had lectured on the greatness of republican federal governments, and I had tried to popularize the doctrine that peace could be enjoyed in Europe only when all empires, monarchies, and republics would be united in a federation of states. I had been very active - in order to check the menacing invasion of the doctrines of Karl Marx and of the materialistic conception of history - to give as much diffusion as it was possible for me to two books of typical American authors - Progress and Poverty of Henry George, and Looking Backward of Edward Bellamy. The last book was responsible - I am sorry to say - to help the spread of Socialism much more than all the missionary work of Andrea Costa, and all the books and pamphlets of Marx, Engels, Lafargue, etc. Signor Oddino Morgari, a leading member of the Italian Parliament, after he read and reread Looking Backward, deserted the ranks of the Republicanism of Mazzini, and became one of the prophets of the so-called Scientific Socialist Party. It was not my fault, though. In Italy, in season and out of season, year in and year out, I advocated the principles of a republican federal form of government, as had been proposed by Carlo Cattaneo, Alberto Mario, and Giuseppe Ferrari, the eminent philosopher to whom we owe the magnificent edition of the works of Giovan Battista Vico. I worshipped Mazzini, on whose knees I played in my infancy in the hospitable house of Giovanni Nicotera in Naples.
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