Sick

Italy last week was the new sick man of Europe, and growing daily sicker. Its No. 1 Socialist, Pietro Nenni, voiced the nation's anguish in an anguished plea: "The Allied Control Commission should get out, leave us Italians to administer our misery alone."

Good Intentions. In the fourth month of Rome's occupation, Italians were hungry, dirty, ragged and undecided. Premier Ivanoe Bonomi's six-party government was bumblingly, quarrelsomely impotent, unable even to impose order. It had no system of communication with the provinces. It lacked even the cars and gasoline to send its members for reports. Superimposed on it was a bumbling, Anglo-U.S. military bureaucracy, four-fifths British brains, four-fifths U.S. supplies. But neither brains nor supplies counted enough, because neither the A.C.C. nor Washington and London seemed to have a clear idea of what to do. In a shambles of good intentions, A.C.C. and Bonomi's Government most often succeeded only in checking each other.

What Will the U.S. Do? The confusion extended to nearly every Italian. People with not enough money for proper food bought newspaper after newspaper, pathetically looking for guidance. Impartially they read Communist, Socialist, Vatican, Monarchist or Republican papers--anything that might offer a glimmer of light. A generation of corrupt Fascism, months of brutal German occupation, sapped their capacity to think for themselves. Italians were the children of a dead past, facing an uncertain future. In bewilderment they asked: "What will Britain do? Russia? Above all, what will America do?" They never asked: "What will we do?"*

Italy was also a land of contrasts. In Rome iridescent socialites decayed in amiable dolce far niente. In Florence amid hunger and ruins a mayor was installed with Renaissance pomp & pageantry (see cut). Italy was also a land going into a climactic winter for which it had not enough of anything. Romans used to burn 120,000 kilowatts daily; now they were getting 30,000, and even that was dependent on an uncertain coal supply. There were not even enough candles to give everybody more than one a month. The departing Germans had driven away in the busses and there was power to run street cars only at rush hour. Southern Italy had lost half its cattle. Leather was practically unobtainable. But with inadequate rations and black market prices, most had no money for anything but food. Many had neither money, jobs nor food.

Simple Absurdities. Here & there flurries of violence spotlighted the morbid aimlessness. A Roman mob beat and drowned a hated Fascist (TIME, Sept. 25). In other cities there were other acts of mob violence. Barefoot carabinieri flunkied for Allied officers. Once they had been traditional symbols of legality and order. Now they were simple absurdities. But the mobs had not coalesced into a movement. Most Italians were too preoccupied with keeping alive, or too weak from hunger to stir.

Italian chaos was on two levels. On the upper, Communists, Socialists, Actionists cross-hauled each other. Socialists demanded Italy for Italians while their Communist associates-of-the-moment demanded Italian land for Italian peasants. Both roundly, steadily attacked the Bonomi Government, of which each was a part. The politically important Action Party attacked the Communists, charged the Reds with violence in breaking up Action Party rallies. The force of these conflicts constantly cross-hauled the people on the lower level.

Italy had all the chaos necessary to all-out anarchy. It did not have anarchy--yet, but Italians would not stay mute and muddled forever. At some point they would have to make up their minds in which direction they wanted to go. And the way they went would affect all Europe.

*For news of some things the United Nations would do, see U.S. AT WAR.

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