The president Fernando Ferroni sent today an open, touching message to the personnel of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Italian research organization he directs. The INFN contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson by participating to the CMS and ATLAS experiments at CERN, providing funding and personnel -administrative staff, technicians, and researchers who are active members of the two big collaborations and who gave critical contributions to the discovery.

Particularly significant is the last paragraph in Ferroni's message (I hope he will excuse my rough translation below):

"Many thanks to you, young graduate students and post-docs, who have accepted to live this adventure because you realized its challenge and its frontier value. You shared with your colleagues a fundamental piece of your life; you have grasped, I hope, the message that merit is the only meaningful parameter of this science, and the hierarchy in your daily job counts little in front of  the goodness of ideas. However... We are not able to promise you, neither in quantity nor in timing, a job which corresponds to your merits. This country has enormous problems and yet, as a lame consolation, there are many countries in the world who are ready to welcome you and profit from your love for study and discovery. It is my biggest worry, the puzzle of my Presidency."

In other words, Italy is proud of its physics researchers, but since the government does not invest in research in these times of economical crisis, we encourage to leave, albeit with a heavy heart.

Needless to say, I share Ferroni's worries and I appreciate his speaking this unwelcome truth.