HUGO TO ITALY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 4011, 18 August 1915, Page 6

HUGO TO ITALY.

THE SWORD OF A PASSING P.ll AN TOM.

The “Suffragette” quotes from Victor Hugo’s eulogy of Garibaldi, dated IStli June, 1800: —-

■•lmagine this splendid vision— Italy free! free! Tell me, do you see it, this vision which to-morrow will be a reality!

•"•'Finished is all that was false Lies, ashes, darkness have vanished Italy exists. Italy is Italy.

‘Where there was a geographical term there is now a nation. Whore there was a corpse, there is now a soul. "Where there was a spectre there is now an Ar.hangel—the immense Archangel of the people, Liberty, standing erect ivitli wings outspread. “Italy the great dead one has awakened. See her, she arises and smiles on the human race ! She says to Greece: I am thy daughter. She says to France: I am thy mother. “Let Europe be illuminated 1 Yes, let the civilisation of the ancient- continent, wliich has abolished superstition through Voltaire, slavery through Wilberforce, the scaffold _ through Beccaria, let this elder civilisation with its henceforth inextinguishable rays shine anew, and let it set above mankind its old watch-light made up of the three-great Haines: France, England, and Italy! “Again a Avord 1 What is the result of this splendid epic ? What emerges from it all? A moral laiv-, an august law ; and that la-AV is this: “Force does not exist. “No, force is not. There is only right. “There are only principles. There are only justice and truth. There are only tho peoples. There are only souls, those forces of the ideal. There is only conscience here below—and Providence on high. “What is force? What is the sword? Who, then, among those who think, arc afraid of the sword ? It is not wo, the free people of France; it is not you, the free people of England ! Conscious right lifts the head high. Force and the sword are nothingness. The sword is only a hideous gleam in tlm darkness, atragic and swiftly passing phantom. “Bight is tho eternal light. Right is the permanence of truth in the soul. Right'is God living in man. “And . thence it comes that ivher© there is right, there also is the certainty of triumph. One man ivho lias right on his side is legion. A singlo sword that has right ivitli it has the power of lightning. Who speaks o! right, speaks of victory. “Obstacles there are none — no, none. There is no A’eto upon the will of the future.

“Progress is none other than a phenomenon of gravitation.”