[2] On the fourth ballot, Einaudi was elected president by a large margin, while the communists and the socialists decided to vote for the liberal senator Vittorio Emanuele Orlando.

As required by the procedure, after taking the oath in front of the Italian Parliament, Einaudi gave his inaugural address to the nation, speaking in the President of the Chamber of Deputies.

[4] A central theme of President Einaudi's inaugural address was a call to restore a true democratic system after more than twenty years of fascist dictatorship.

He underlined the importance of two liberal principles enunciated in the new Constitution, freedom and equality: "It [the Constitution] affirms two solemn principles: to preserve in the present social structure only what is the guarantee of the freedom of the human person against the omnipotence of the State and private arrogance; and to guarantee to everyone, whatever the fortuitous cases of birth, the greatest possible equality in the starting points".

[4] President Einaudi contained also several references to the international affiliation of the newborn Italian Republic: "Twenty years of dictatorial rule had proclaimed civil unrest, external war, and such material and moral destruction to the Fatherland that every hope of redemption seemed vain.

Instead, after having saved, despite the regional and local differences and painfully mutilated, the indestructible national unity from the Alps to Sicily, we are now tenaciously reconstructing the destroyed material fortunes and we have twice given the world admirable proof of our will to return to free democratic political competitions and our ability to cooperate, equal among equals, in the forums in which we want to rebuild that Europe from which so much light of thought and humanity came into the world".