The Italian Colony of today possesses such forceful elements that willing or unwilling it is constrained to enter the political arena.

Thirty years ago the Colony was a nonentity, not by reasons of the number of its members but because of their moral standing. Today, however, conditions are very much changed, and our Colony presents to the observer two indisputable facts: an American or Americanized generation on the one hand, and on the other, a continuous immigration of intelligent elements.

The young people who came here in childhood, or who have been born on American soil, may understand the respective dialects of their parents, but very few of them are familiar with the Italian language. They speak English, to which they have become accustomed, either through the necessity of 2companionship or by reasons of instructions received at school.

Intelligent immigrants, anxious to learn the new language, study the customs of the people with whom they come into daily contact; for they have quite another end in view than that of those who came here in childhood. With the former, days count for years, and although they rarely become masters of the language, they easily adapt themselves to American life which they render more vigorous by the contribution of their European thought, the result of education, the basis of which is formed by the principles of right taught to the world for centuries by those great civilizers - the Greeks and the Romans.

The Italians born in America, Americanized youth and the new intelligent immigrants are the three factors that draw the Italian Colony into politics 3which, must be considered as the logical expression of acquired civil rights. Non-participation in politics means the renunciation of human liberty, and hence the annulment of personal civil right.

Now, Italo-Americans and intelligent immigrants, do not intend to renounce their rights, to annul their civil entity, to concur with inactivity in the moral suicide of the Italian Colony. Desiring to unite with the other Colonies which form the nation, they resolve to show the power of their public right, by entering the political arena. But it is necessary that they should have an exact idea of the struggle in which they are to take part. The thought of individual advantage, as a principle of nature is correct, however it must be in accord with the general welfare of the Colony, which should always be preferred.