Great War: Mattarella “pivotal event for the nation life … – AGI – Agenzia Journalistic Italy

18:22 May 24, 2015

(AGI) – Monte San Michele (Gorizia), May 24 . – In survived the First World War “was carved, next to the incurable wounds, the sense of having participated in an event of fundamental importance for the life of the nation”. To say this, speaking on Mount San Michele, in the province of Gorizia, the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.

“The Italian soldiers, mostly peasants, and stories from different regions, discovered for the first time in the sense of duty, in silent resignation, in the state of insecurity ‘, membership of a single destiny of the people and nation, “he added. “The national consciousness, first the preserve of small intellectual elite, widened and consolidated in the mud of the trenches,” he stressed again Mattarella.

According to the President, the First World War “it was also a big factor in modernization, industrial, scientific, social. But ever growing modernity ‘was paid to such’ high price ‘. “From a humanitarian point of view it was a massacre: there killed 10 million soldiers and an unknown number of civilians, there were millions of wounded and mutilated. He destroyed thriving economies, produced deaths and devastation, hunger and misery,” he remembered.

“On the geopolitical level, its consequences – above all, the peace treaties too hard – formed the basis for new and even more ‘tragic events in Europe and the world”, he concluded. And again. Today the people who fought during World War I on Mount San Michele, in the province of Gorizia are “bound together by firm bonds of friendship and cooperation and the common European future. That ‘s the significance of exposure of the flag on this day “he said, noting that the presence of the representatives of peoples who then fought” gives, in this celebration, his sense more ‘authentic, highlighting the desire that every man feels for peace and brotherhood. ”

“In this universe of mud, suffering, hardship and death, thousands and thousands of soldiers on both sides, endured incredible tests, performed acts of great value and courage and touching gestures of solidarity ‘- continued Mattarella – We are here to honor them. The cruel logic of war is not able’ to bend the sense of brotherhood, friendship and humanity ‘. The hatred of the enemy did not prevail on compassion’ “.