This is not a time for a neutral and indifferent journalism. (It's necessary to get involved in the political struggle - Indro said to us - to defend our ideas. When Montanelli encouraged me to engage myself politically in the LiberaI Party, along with Bettiza and Zappulli, I often looked at Abbagnano as my ideal reference point. His Storia della filosofia had been part of my cultural formation. I lived both in Rome and Milan and travelled all over the world as a correspondent for the 'Corriere'. Even when I hadn't yet met him, his thought had fascinated me for years. Without any rethoric according to his style, Abbagnano justified his decision with the comment: 'I wouldn't miss the adventure of freedom together with Montanelli. Abbagnano was certainly the best known contributor to Montanelli's 'Giornale', who when he joined the group of those who had left the 'Corriere', met the hostility of many intellectuals, colleagues and friends, who were 'organic' left-wingers.

I happened to meet him there, while he was still settling in is new house in the hills around San Francisco. An indication was the decision of Giovanni Sartori, the most famous Italian political writer, to leave the 'Cesare Alfieri' in Florence and move to Stanford University in California. Many intellectuals were worrying about what was happening in Italy. Among the best known names were those of Nicola Abbagnano, Guido Piovene, Rosario Romeo, Sergio Ricossa, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Nicola Matteucci, Vittorio Mathieu, Geno Pampaloni, Carlo Laurenzi and Vittorio Dan Segre, who were a good part of the Italian intelligentsia which, with that choice, declared their rejection of the communism of those restless years, as Enzo Bettiza later pointed out in his Ombre Rosse. A group of intellectuals sided with Montanelli and made of 'Il Giornale' a kind of 'fortress Bastiani' of culture and non-conformism. It's enough to mention two names that belonged to the history of 'Corriere': Egisto Corradi and Mario Cervi.

Other contributors of the 'Corriere' were also ill at ease and many of them followed Indro when he founded 'Il Giornale'. In a certain sense the victims of the Czarina's leadership were Giovanni Spadolini, obliged to leave the management in 1972 (Piero Ottone took over from him) and then Indro Montanelli, who felt ill at ease at his old 'Corriere' in those years of students' protests and popular riots, whith the serious episodes of violence that were the warning signs of the future terrorism.

Actually it was the 'Czarina', Giulia Maria's nickname, who took the initiative in the management. 'Il Giornale' was born after a separation from the 'Corriere della Sera', edited at that time by Piero Ottone, the publisher, while the owners were Giulia Maria Crespi, Mariolino Crespi and Tonino Leonardi. We had been called to work on this newspaper by its editor, Indro Montanelli, who was assisted in the editorship by Enzo Bettiza, Gianni Granzotto, Cesare Zappulli and Gian Galeazzo Biazzi Vergani. I met Nicola Abbagnano in 1974 at the first assembly of the Societ dei Redattori of 'Il Giornale' to which we both belonged: he, a great intellectual and certainly the most important Italian contemporary philosopher, and I, a journalist, with a good professional curriculum. The Modern Liberalism of Nicola Abbagnano 2003 The Modern Liberalism of Nicola Abbagnano In ' Nuova Antologia', Ottobre- Dicembre 2003, pp.

Guglielmo d ockham