Italy

on the World today

ATLANTIC

June 1948

THE Italian people arose on election Sunday to find it an ideal clay for voting — cool, cloudy, good enough to get out of the house fait not so good that they were templed away from the polls to the country or seashore. They voted in greater numbers than ever before in their history. Of the 29 million men and women eligible, 27 million cast, ballots for the Chamber of Deputies, everywhere they voted in peace. In a Europe weary with post-war violence and elections, this was a triumph for order and massive consultation of the people. Whatever the result, no one could deny that it would represent the will of the vast majority freely expressed.

The counting that followed was a painfully slow process, characteristic of Italian elections. Each ballot was opened by hand, the vote registered by pencil on a chart, and the total added carefully and communicated to the Ministry of the Interior in Home. From the moment that the first returns were announced on Monday night, there was no doubt that the result would be a great Christian Democratic victory.

The only surprise was the distribution of seats in the Chamber under the complicated system of proportional representation. Of the total 574 seals, the Christian Democrats with 48.7 per cent of the popular vote obtained 307 places — an absolutely unprecedented majority. The People’s Front — the Communists plus left-wing Socialists — with 30.7 per cent of the vote took 182 seats. Other parties were so far behind that they no longer mattered in Parliament.

De Gasperi’s first meeting with foreign correspondents after the results became known was more a triumphal reception than a press conference. The room in the Viminale Palace was crowded to suffocation with Italians, most of them employees of government offices in the building. Very few of those present were detected taking notes. They applauded as De Gasperi came down the corridor. They cheered as he entered the room. Some shouted “Duce! Duce!” forgetful of Mussolini, hailing De Gasperi as their leader.

The two most important, points that De Gasperi made were: (1) an explanation that Italy now belonged definitely to the Western world and would cooperate fully with the West; (2) an apology, because of budgetary and other difficulties, for the delay in land reform that would be inevitable.

Political trickery

In so intense a campaign it was inevitable that there should be cases of political trickery. The most notorious was the circulation of false and supposedly secret documents — a device to which both sides resorted.

A volume bearing the mark of a Swiss publisher bul actually printed in northern Italy appeared under the title Secret Documents of Vatican Diplomacy. It purported to disclose private dispatches from papal nuncios in various capitals and was intended to show that they engaged in a conspiracy to unite the Western world, particularly the I niled Stales and Spain, in a bloc against the Soviet Union. These so-called revelations were given a huge display by the Communist press in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.

By the time a second volume appeared under the same title, the government was ready for it. Fosters appeared naming the author and denouncing him as a hack writer who began his career in pornographic literature, worked for a time in the Vatican as a secretary, and was now employed as a journalist by the People’s Front. Fie was arrested on charges of falsifying documents, disclosing secret documents, and tending to disturb relations with other states. The apparent contradiction in the charges was explained by the contention I hat some of the minor documents were actually true, thus giving the volumes the appearance of reliability, but. that more damaging evidence was false.

The government itself was not innocent of the same practice. A crude effort was made by a person representing himself as a British Intelligence agent, to sell a supposedly secret Communist document to the American press and radio correspondents. The asking price was $1.5,000. To t heir credit, none of the American correspondents took it.

This document purported to he a photostatic copy of the Communist Plan K to seize power in Italy. It was written in Italian and signed by Andrei Zhdanov and Luigi Longo, Russian and Italian representatives of the Cominform. The original was said to have been stolen from Congo’s private file, photostated, and returned without his knowledge. The government wanted to use it but felt, quite rightly, that in view of its melodramatic nature it would carry more weight if if could be presented as coming from a sober American publication.

It finally appeared in the unsober Paris evening newspaper, L’Intronsigeant. De Gasperi referred to the document in his closing speeches and expressed the conviction that it was true. Privately his aides conceded that the circumstances surrounding the document seemed unreal but insisted that even though this particular one might be false, some plot of its kind must be true in view of past public statements and actions of the Communists.

In the case of each secret document the other side was forewarned and denied its validity before it was made public. Moreover, especially in the case of Plan K, it is doubtful whether it swayed as much as a single vote.

De Gasperi and U.S.

The Christian Democratic victory means that for five years, or as much of that period as the new Parliament is permitted to live, a single parly with a deliberately chosen majority will have the responsibility of governing Italy on its own. Much of the sustaining responsibility will also fall on the* United States. There were no longer any oldfashioned denials of interference in the internal affairs of other states. America, like the Catholic Church, entered energetically into the campaign. When the counting was over, the common Italian Comment was, “This is what, you Americans wanted.”

The now regime is as openly tied to Washington as the Communist opposition is tied to Moscow, De Gasperi’s party is divided, as the name implies, between Christian elements leaning toward the right and democrats farther to the left. To keep his majority intact will require all his great capacity for compromise. Against him stands a bloc comprising nearly one third of the nation. They voted against De Gasperi and for the East despite all the attentions lavished upon them from the West.

The wisdom of the policy behind the American campaign might be questioned, but the energy and effectiveness with which the policy was executed were beyond question. Once conceived, the policy was carried out powerfully, with no regard for tact or subtlety, but with complete concentration on the objective that, was dually achieved.

The Communists and Socialists

Where the Communists have gained, it has been at the expense of the Socialists. The worst loser in the election was Pietro Nenni, the head of the left-wing Socialists. In 194., Nenni and his mushrooming raided Socialist Party were virtually the arbiters of power. They hoped to attract a vast section of the Italian middle classes into their fold. The common talk then was that the Socialist Party was “the party with a future.”

In 1947, Nenni lost the whole right whig of Ids party, along with many efficient leaders. He still had the bulk of his followers; but they melted away in the election campaign, and today he is left with about 10 per cent against the Communists’ 20 per cent of the electorate. Nenni has been the first to realize that he is the tail wagged by the Communist dog.

Furthermore, the Communists have gained in distribution. If they have lost in the North, where the workers were getting weary of their pressure tactics and their “goon squads,” they have gained in Central Italy and in the South, among the peasantry. This gives them a broader foundation, and removes their old fear of the reaction from ihe peasant South moving up under the military spur to crush the progressive North.

De Gasperi’s majority

And what of De Gasperi? What is his solid core? The Vatican and its powerful organization, most assuredly. Then a large part of the experienced political and administrative personnel, and some good experts of the Socialist right wing. He has the prayerful good wishes of the stable part of the nation. Put in his majority are also the timid, the frightened, the confused, the stand-patters, the ex-fascists, the bureaucracy, and the vested interests who have decided to bet on him for all they are worth. These are some of the same people who used to give Mussolini his huge majorities because it is always safe to vote for authority and for one who delivers the jobs.

There is very little political will in all that mass, and no mandate except to keep Italy in the Marshall Plan. There are some modern-minded men in De Gasperi’s own camp who believe in modern measures; there are some unafraid oldsehool-tie liberals like his Secretary of the Treasury, Luigi Einaudi, who initiated the monelary reform; there are a vast number of young people who are hoping for a better future than the traditional line of bureaucratic parasitism

There are also the right-wing Socialists under Saragat, who might have polled much more if they had had the courage to stand alone as a Third Force. They have come over to De Gasperi only to flee the disastrous leadership of Nenni and the danger of totalitarian domination; but they are not renouncing their hope* of a decent Labor Party, and they expect us to give them a break.

How much reform?

De Gasperi has the solid virtues, but he is also an old-line politician of Hapsburg traditions, with little feeling for social problems. He has already passed up several opportunities for land reform, and in the interim the Communists with their promises have made gains among the peasants.

The paradox of the peasant’s voting Communist is simply explained: it was a way of voting for a land reform and against the government, which has always let him vegetate in ancestral neglect. Further inertia on De Gaspcri’s part would give his enemies a formidable weapon, now that they have gained a strong foothold in the miserable South.

De Gasperi’s majority is an emergency affair: it expresses the choice of Italy between East and West. We shall hope for signs of reassurance. At the outset he has talked more of strikebreaking than of constructive reform. Among academicians one hears serious misgivings lest De Gasperi put the squeeze on the state school and university system in favor of confessional education. The freedom of the press is still precarious, and the weird price structure is still dictated by a small group of big businessmen. These are danger poinls of which everyone is well aware, and because of our new feeling of responsibility, we must watch them.