"Beautiful Day"

On the bleak day in December 1941 when Don Ascanio Colonna, the titled, haughty Italian Ambassador to the U.S., walked out of his embassy, Antonino Celotto was very sad. Faithful Antonino, who had served four ambassadors as embassy caretaker, had watched white-faced Don Ascanio burning the embassy's papers. Now Italy, at war with the U.S., had cut the last bond.

Antonino went back sadly into the embassy, to the four-room apartment where he lived with his wife and four children, and settled down to wait. He watched the Swiss come in to take over Italian affairs, then watched the Swiss delegation dwindle from 15 to two as, slowly but surely, the efficient Swiss ran out of Italian affairs to handle. Antonino checked each day on the embassy's shuttered windows--and hoped.

Last week Antonino Celotto, who once owned a grocery in Manhattan, was happy again. A new Italian ambassador was about to arrive. Antonino put on his best suit, slicked his coal black hair with pomade. He waited at the massive front door. As soon as it was proper for a caretaker to proffer his hand, Antonino greeted the new ambassador.

Then he sat down to pen a statement. Wrote he: "I am happy that the embassy to which I am devoted and for which I have worked for 14 years is going to be reopened under the Italian flag. . . ." For a few moments, it seemed as though Antonino was the real ambassador. He poured himself a glass of white wine and said: "It is a beautiful day."

"I appreciate your work." Few hours earlier, in a suite at the Wardman Park Hotel, tall, greying Ambassador Alberto Tarchiani had made his bow to the U.S. Just 55 hours out of Rome, via a U.S. Army transport, he had called in the U.S. press even before inspecting his embassy. "I am an old journalist myself," he said to the 21 newsmen. "I appreciate your work very much."

Ambassador Tarchiani, 59, was once one of Italy's great journalists: managing editor of Milan's Corriere della Sera. In 1925, at the height of his career, when Mussolini muzzled the press, he went into exile. After 15 years in Paris, writing anti-Fascist pamphlets, aiding in the escape of other antiFascists from Italy, he came to the U.S. Along with Count Carlo Sforza, he was one of the first of the exiles to go back to Italy after the Allied invasion.

Alberto Tarchiani explained his mission in the U.S.: 1) to help the economic reconstruction of his country; 2) to gain full membership for Italy in the United Nations.

Italy, said he, is anxious to play a larger part in the war. "All of the Italian fleet is at the disposal of the Allies. Italian aviators are ready to fly, if planes are given them. About 50,000 Italian merchant seamen could be used on United Nations ships." But what Italy wants most, said Signor Tarchiani, is the chance to build a democratic government of its own. He added hopefully: "I am sure to find here the greatest sympathy and comprehension for Italy."

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