I have read the Italian authors, old and new—thinkers, politicians, artists. I have always been attracted by the study of our Renaissance in all its aspects. The nineteenth century, with its artistic and spiritual contrasts, classicism and romanticism and their contrasts, has held my attention. I have studied thoroughly the period of our history called risorgimento in its moral and political essence.
I have analyzed with great care all the development of our intellectual life from 1870 up to this moment.
These studies have occupied the most serene hours of my day.
Among foreign writers, I have meditated much upon the work of the German thinkers. I have admired the French. One of the books that interested me most was the “Psychology of the Crowd” by Gustave Lebon. The intellectual life of the Anglo-Saxons interests me especially because of the organized character of its culture and its scholastic taste and flavor.
But all that I have read and am reading is only a picture that is unfolded before my eyes without giving me an impression strong enough to make an incision in me. I draw out only the cardinal points that give me above all and first of all the necessary elements for the comparison of the essence of the different nations.
I am desperately Italian. I believe in the function of Latinity.
I came to these conclusions after and through a critical study of the German, Anglo-Saxon and Slavonic history and that of the world; nor have I for obvious reasons neglected the history of the other continents.
The American people, by their sure and active creative lines of life, have touched, and touch, my sensibility. For I am a man of government and of party. I endlessly admire those who make out of creative work a law of life, those who win with the ability of their genius and not with the intrigue of their eloquence. I am for those who seek to make technic perfect in order to dominate the elements and give to men more sure footings for the future.
I do not respect—I even hate—those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others.
The American nation is a creative nation, sane, with straight-lined ideas. When I talk with men of the United States it does not occur to me to use diplomacy for winning or persuading them. The American spirit is crystalline. One has to know how to take it and possibly win it over with a watchful responsiveness rather than with cunning words. As the reserves of wealth are gone now from the continents to North America, it is right that a large part of the attention of the world should be concentrated upon the activity of this nation that has men of great value, economists of real wisdom and scholars that are outlining the basis of a new science and a new culture. I admire the discipline of the American people and their sense of organization. Certainly every nation has its periods. The United States is now in the golden age. It is necessary to study these tendencies and their results, and this is not only in the interest of America but in the interest of the world.