Abbey of Monte Cassino

[laughs]

And the Abbey of Montecassino.

Monte Cassino.

[laughs]

Those of us who remember the last war could not help being reminded of a similar omen when General Allenby's troops captured Jerusalem in September 1918. but there is more in it than that.

If Rome, the capital of all our fortunes, was to be won, could it be won standing, or would we see pictures of it lying in the dust like the Abbey of Monte Cassino? In that city, isolated from the ambitions, but not from the perils that surrounded him, lived the ruler of a great spiritual empire, the personification of a great spiritual ideal.

Was he to see the city he loved wrecked amid the wreck of the world he loved? We know the answer.

Rome stands.