Dr. Ernesto Paolozzi
Some Relevant Comments on the Centenary of World War I: 1914-2014
W
e are currently in the process of celebrating the centenary of World War I. This can be an opportunity if we can confer to this commemoration a historic value together with an ethicopolitical intent. That is to say, if we are able to look at such an event with an eye to the future, in order to warn Governments, leadership classes, as well as common citizens, not to venture into a new spiral of violence and destruction, as wars usually are. This perspective must accompany the memory of that war which broke out in the very heart of Europe and soon became a global tragedy, among the worst in history. Of course this fervent wish of ours does not prevent us from thinking, from fearing that that history is not after all the magistra vitae, that to be conscious of our past mistakes does not prevent us from committing new ones. This is so true that only a few years after the end of World War I the world fell into a second World War which turned out to be even more terrible than the first one. And yet we have a philosophical and moral duty to try to understand, to understand the past in order to turn toward the future. World War I had, naturally, many meanings. Despite the drama of so many human lives that were lost, perhaps even because of those bitter losses, Italy seemed to have consolidated its political and moral unity. Everybody knows that after the defeat at Caporetto, both the army and civilian population were capable of recovering their moral courage, the pride, and the spirit of sacrifice which led to the final victory on the Piave river. This victory became a symbol, like the river from which it acquired a name. This was a people’s war which saw farmers and workers from Southern as well as Northern Italy fight side by side, which also saw the sincere participation of different social classes. We have hinted here at a completion of the Unification Movement known as Risorgimento. From 1861, when the country was unified, Italy perceived itself as a people ready and capable to defend their freedom and the borders of their country from foreign invasions. And yet, that national movement which had seemed (and in fact was) the completion of a great epoch of struggles for freedom and democracy and the origin of a new season of national prosperity, revealed itself a little later as the last great moral and political gesture of a great people which had embarked on some dark times concluded in a great tragedy.
