tongue. World Wars and the Italian Republic Right after World War I, the economic and political situation in Veneto was critical, so that a former Prime Minister and native of Venice, Luigi Luzzatti, wrote to Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and told him there could be a "Venetian Ireland", in parallel to the simultaneous Irish War of Independence, while the prefect of Treviso signalled the risk that a separatist movement aimed at separating Veneto from Italy might flourish in the province of Treviso. Precursors of the present-day Venetist movement date back to before World War II and were both left- and right-wing. In 1920 La Riscossa, a Venetian newspaper close to the Socialists and the Republicans, espoused the need for a "united elective governorate with autonomous and competent technical and administrative organs" as an alternative to the "central political rule" Guido Bergamo, a Republican member of the Chamber of Deputies elected in Veneto, wrote that "the Venetian problem is so acute that from today on we will preach the rebellion of Venetians. Citizens, let's not pay taxes, not recognise the central government in Rome, chase away prefects, retain the money from direct taxes in Veneto". Shortly after Italico Corradino Cappellotto, a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Italian People's Party, launched the first Venetist party forth of the 1921 general election: the Lion of Saint Mark won 6.1% of the votes in the province of Treviso. After the takeover of Benito Mussolini, who among other things proposed to eradicate the local languages in favour of Italian language widespread, the rise of Fascism, World War II, and the birth of the Italian Republic, Venetist ideas lost ground, in an era in which the "myth of the indivisibility and the unity" of the country was strong even in Veneto. However, the campaign of Mussolini to eradicate regional languages was largely unsuccessful in the region, which soon became a stronghold of the Christian Democracy (DC) party due to the leading role of the Catholic Church in the region. In the 1948 general election Christian Democrats won 60.5% of the vote in Veneto. Since 1919, Venetia plus the newly annexed territories from Austria, which included Trentino and South Tyrol, were called the Three Venices (Tre Venezie, whereof Triveneto), meaning Venezia Euganea (Veneto plus large chunks of Friuli), Venezia Giulia (the eastern part of current Friuli-Venezia Giulia) and Venezia Tridentina (Trentino and South