Page:Cesare Battisti and the Trentino.djvu/21

 whenever the Italians so desired, in the hope of inducing the Germans to consent to a separate administration of the two sections of the province.

Cesare Battisti was an eloquent advocate of this new move; to further it he was elected a deputy to the Diet, where he made several memorable speeches. The new tactics did not secure autonomy for Trentino, but they did serve to restrain the too insolent protectionism favoring the German part of the province.

Battisti's stand in national questions and his own patriotic sentiments which he had been able to transmit to the people, facilitated his election to Parliament in 1911, when at the elections by second ballot for the electoral district of Trento the liberals added their vote to that of the socialists. In Parliament he did not represent a party, but was truly the deputy of Trentino.

In an admirable speech before the House of Deputies at Vienna on December 12, 1912, against the military dictatorship in Trentino and the provocative policies of Austria against her ally, Italy, Battisti closed with the memorable words: "We demand that these mad policies be brought to an end. If in the Austrian bureaucratic repertory there be a fitting phrase, it is the phrase designating as 'irresponsible power' that of certain men. No matter what his name, be he the heir to the throne or someone else responsible for this policy of compression against Trentino, of waste and danger for all the people of Austria, no matter who the man, he is in reality irresponsible, insane, a man destined for the mad-house. We, therefore, rebel in the name of civilization and humanity and demand that such government be brought to an end; that the war party, this parasitic militarism, be done away with together with the madmen who are its leaders."

The political and national struggle in Trentino grew ever Page nineteen