Practicing Democrat

On a moonlit street in the heel of Italy a British soldier uttered a cry of pain, fell with a stab wound in his back. Angry Tommies beat through the dark village, could not find the assailant. Next day a gang of Italian youths pummeled a tipsy British soldier. Again Tommies rushed to the rescue. Shots rang out, hit some bystanders, dispersed a defiant mob.

This vignette of violence had a moral: it happened in a town where a Fascist still held office. Here, as in most of the liberated land turned over to King Vittorio Emanuele and Premier Pietro Badoglio, things were not going well. As U.S. officers had testified (TIME, April 24), Allied prestige had fallen low.

Paragon's Job. But there was hope. Old Marshal Pietro Badoglio belatedly consulted southern Italy's six anti-Fascist parties, gave them seven of 13 cabinet portfolios in a broadened government. The cleanup of known Fascists, at first very slow, had been speeded up (total ousted to date: 820). The AMG in Italy, largely staffed by British and U.S. businessmen with no nose for Fascists, had been absorbed by the better-run Allied Control Commission under British Lieut. General Mason-Macfarlane. In particular, an Italian-American from New York had brought to bear a great deal of political savvy, a great ability to personify democracy to Italians who had never seen it in action. This paragon is Lieut. Colonel Charles Poletti, ex-Governor and Lieutenant Governor of New York, Regional Commissioner for Naples, Salerno, Benevento and Avellino.

Colonel Poletti took hold last February. He began by renovating his four-story, red-painted, Renaissance prefettura near the Naples waterfront. He had bomb debris cleaned up, plumbing repaired, elbow grease applied to slick up the place. Explained one of his subordinates: "You can't sell democracy in an outhouse."

Then Lieut. Colonel Poletti began selling democracy to Italians. He saw all callers. In wrinkled uniform, slouched behind a huge desk, he listened to complaints, cracked jokes, gave out facts, usually ended interviews with a pep talk reminding Italians of their responsibilities and opportunities. Visitors were flattered by hearing their own language, by the deft touch.

It did not take long for Lieut. Colonel Poletti to put war-shocked Naples on the way toward recovery. Now the city gets regular street washings. Over the radio the Regional Commissioner appeals to Italian patriotism to help stamp out black markets. He has granted labor unions collective bargaining, encouraged a manufacturers' association. In Naples he has installed veteran anti-Fascist administrators. In the suburbs, too, he has restored democratic forms of government, helped industrialists, workers and peasants get representation on local councils, prodded the average Italian into talking over public problems in public meetings.

For his fellow administrators, he has done another service. Reasoning that many of them literally did not know how to define or detect a Fascist, he spelled out a complete but simple list of definitions. General Mason-Macfarlane liked the Poletti list so much that he made it a standard guide in all of Allied Italy.

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