They Never Said It by Jr. Paul F. Boller; George John; & Jr. John George

Author:Jr., Paul F. Boller; George, John; & Jr. John George
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1989-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

ANCIENT-SEA QUOTE

“The ancient sea of Venice, from Fiume to the inlet of Cattaro, uninterruptedly, through all of Dalmatia, ought to belong to Italy.”

Perhaps the most amazing of all the Lincoln fakes was the ancient-sea statement appearing on the front page of Popolo d’Italia, edited by Benito Mussolini, on April 2, 1920, two years before his famous “march on Rome.” Under the headline, “WHILE FIUME WAITS EXPECTANTLY,” Mussolini’s paper featured a translation into Italian of Lincoln’s statement about the sea of Venice, followed by a letter, alleged to have been sent by Lincoln in 1853 to the Italian scientist Macedonio Melloni, calling for the unification of Italy and for a United States of Europe with Rome as the capital. The letter also denounced Great Britain for its “voracious greed” and declared that Rome “has given civilization to the entire world, which has actually discovered us, which has created us, redeemed us, educated us, and nurtured us morally with its indestructible laws. . . .” But Lincoln’s main point—which was put in italics—was this: “The sea of Venice should be no longer defrauded. Not to concede its complete annexation, without exception of any sort, to Italy, is, for the citizens of all countries, and for the fellow countrymen of Franklin and of Washington, a true and real matricide, which would cast infamy upon the treacherous wrongdoers, and would cry out for vengeance to the Nemesis of history itself. You [Rome] were great when we were not even born.” Lincoln’s letter, translated into English, was reprinted in the Philadelphia Public Ledger in May 1920, dropped out of sight for a few years, and then reappeared in an Italian historical journal of some standing in 1931 and was at once repudiated as a forgery by both Italian and American scholars. In 1942, however, Mussolini’s propagandists, claiming French-owned Corsica for Italy, quoted from the Lincoln letter in broadcasts to the Corsicans.138

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