The Antagonist's Face

In the struggle between Communism and the West for the political allegiance of the Italian people, the U.S. last week made an important tactical move: it crossed Italy's war debt (about $1 billion) off the books. Italy's frozen accounts in the U.S. will be thawed, her merchant ships returned. Italians were grateful for the agreement, negotiated by able Ivan Matteo Lombardo, an industrialist who became Secretary-General of the Socialist Party. But with the skepticism of a long-suffering nation, many wondered what the U.S. would ask in return.

The Way of the World. Said Amedeo Panizzi, 71, just out after a month's illness: "That bit of news gave me more pleasure than getting out of that hot, hard bed." Said Attilio Bertini: "It's good of America to help. The ships coming back to us is the best thing. They can bring raw materials for our industries, and we can put our shoulders to the wheel. But we hope those ships will never bring war materials." Renato de Santis, a Communist, said (and many non-Communists agreed): "The Americans will make us give something in exchange. They treat us like the poor devils we are. It is the way of the world."

The U.S. would have to do a great deal more before it could contain the triumphal march of Italian Communism. The U.S. would also have to learn more about the nature of its Communist antagonists, who in Italy used different methods from the frank totalitarianism of their eastern European comrades. The success of the methods is reflected in a dispatch from TIME Correspondent Emmet Hughes, after a trip through northern Italy, whose glorious cities have become the Communists' fiercest strongholds. His report:

"Let Us Enjoy the Papacy." On first sight, Florence does not seem to have changed much. Tourists buzz over Martinis at Leland's* and shiver in dutiful awe before the graves of Machiavelli and Galileo. Business is good and the city is well fed. But there are many different Florences. There is the Florence of only yesterday--of the anglicized local aristocracy which used to go fox hunting without foxes, mounted in pursuit of a butler who panted across the pine-plumed hillsides strewing a trail of paper scraps. That Florence is certainly gone.

There is the city of Girolamo Savonarola, the austerely fanatical Dominican friar, who preached rebellion against the lavish corruptions of his church and his age. That Florence still finds a fanatical echo in the souls of many Italians.

There is the Florence of Leo X, the Medici pope, who ruled in hedonist splendor, true to his dictum: "Let us enjoy the Papacy, now that God has given it to us." That Florence is preserved in the proud perfection of the city's stones.

There also is the Florence of Mario Fabiani, and he is the present. Fabiani is Florence's Communist mayor.

Fabiani certainly enjoys the mayoralty, now that the people have given it to him. To approach the office of this proletarian dignitary, you pass through a courtyard with Verrocchio's famous bronze put to, then up the stairs to the great hall with its Vasari frescoes and a Michelangelo statue, thence into an anteroom which used to be Pope Leo's chamber. Nothing so vulgar as a "no smoking" sign could be tolerated here; carefully chiseled stone tablets proclaim: "ll Sind-aco proibisce di fumare in questa sola" (The Mayor forbids smoking in this hall).

Free-Thinking Communists. The mayor himself is ensconced next door, in what used to be Pope Clement VII's study. For the summer, Fabiani has abandoned the prevalent Communist fashion (dark double-breasted suit) for an open sport shirt and a light linen jacket. Though only 35, he is a veteran Communist. Nine years in Fascist jails have shrunk his face, left his eyes deepset in sallow sockets. His line is conciliation: "If we Communists were in power in Italy today, we would not destroy private property. Private property has its function to fulfill in Italy for years & years to come."

Was Fabiani hedging against the future? Later, at a lake resort, I talked to sleek, handsome Aldo d'Elia, Florence's Fascist "chief of cabinet" from, 1934 to 1944. D'Elia consoles himself that the Florentine public is as cynically volatile today as in Savonarola's time. D'Elia says: "Florence is a pagan city. The people are easily impassioned, caustic and fickle. They will one day treat their present rulers as they treated us."

A Very Difficult Point. In Florence, as elsewhere in Italy, the Communist Party has had such an unnaturally rapid growth that many of its members are still not firmly-disciplined. On three issues (Trieste, Vatican relations and the Marshall approach) the Italian party has deviated from the Moscow line. If it came to power, the Italian party could probably keep most of these free-thinking Communists in check, but their existence is significant. Here is a typical conversation with one of them:

Q. Is the Communist Party still prepared to stick to democratic processes?

A, We want power only through popular opinion democratically expressed.

Q. Can anyone professing belief in "democracy" at the same time seriously defend Russian conduct in the Balkans?

A. Can anyone seriously believing in "democracy" really defend Anglo-American conduct in Greece?

Q. Any American can publicly criticize his Government's actions in Greece--can you, as a Communist, do the same about Russia's actions in Rumania?

A. I am afraid not. . . . That is a very difficult point. . . .

Q. Why are you a Communist, not a Socialist?

A. Because I am seriously interested in politics.

Q. What would you do in a conflict between Russia and Italy?

A, That is the hardest problem for Communists to analyze. It is very difficult to believe in any international ideal and still be a good patriot. But I certainly know I should fight for Italy. It would be a terrible thing.

This faith in beneficent, nationalist, respectable, blue-serge-suited Communism has conquered city after city in Italy's northern "Red Belt."

Memories in Milan. In bustling, industrial Milan I met Gaetano Invernizzi, the union boss. He is a swarthy man; his brown eyes are slightly out of alignment, the right one blinking off at a tangent. His flabby brown neck and arms thrust out from his cheap cotton shirt are those of a man once used to physical labor, but now confined to an office. Invernizzi has seen it all. His story is that of thousands of other Italian Communists:

"I never had much education. In the days before the first World War, I worked in a factory that made cloth dyes--that's where I got these scars on my wrists. I volunteered for the Army when the war came, then after Caporetto my ideas began to change. I saw that only the rich had gained. I became a Socialist, but I still went to Mass. Then the Fascists came, and anyone in a labor union had to fight for his life. Socialists weren't very effective. I found that more & more of the people I sympathized with were Communists. I began to lose my faith. 'God?' I thought, 'if you really exist, I can't see that praying to you does much good these days.'

"In 1922 I became a member of the Party. I had to flee to France with my whole family. I worked making covers for chairs. In 1930 the French policy threw me out. I went to Belgium. The Belgians threw me out. I went to Luxembourg". Here there was no work. The Party ordered me and my wife back to Italy in 1932. We had to go all through the North, organizing the Party's underground.

"There were 50 of us doing this work. The Fascists caught 47. Just to save us, the Party sent us to Russia. Then in 1935 we were sent back again to Italy. This time we were caught. I spent eight years in the Castelfranco d'Emilia prison near Modena. When Mussolini fell, some of us managed to escape. My wife and I fled to the mountains. I spent 19 years without seeing my mother and father. But there were thousands of others who suffered much more.

"I work hard and the workers here know it. Even though I'm uneducated, every day important people come to this office-- doctors, engineers, all sorts of professional people. A lot of people I know don't trust the Communist Party--but they trust me.

"I think about politics just what any other Communist thinks. We all answer the same questions the same way--because we know we have a system that gives exact answers. Why ask me?"

"It May Never Happen." What answers do northern Italy's capitalists make?

Italian businessmen today sway between despair and whistling in the dark. One manager of a factory employing over 15,000 said: "If you were an American businessman and asked me about making a loan to my own company, I would have to advise you against it."

A wealthy Milanese civil engineer said: "Give a Communist a good meal and he'll forget his politics. It's all a matter of digestion." His philosophy was summed up by two smug mottoes (in English) on his office wall: "Today, is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday--and all is well," and "Don't worry, it may never happen."

Not all businessmen in Italy's industrial North are so fatuous as that. They and their workers have, in fact, achieved one of the most remarkable industrial revivals in postwar Europe. Between the politically confused businessmen and the politically confused converts to Communism, lies another factor, embedded in the Italian character and in the country's mood; it is compounded of common sense, bitter experience, a habit of hard work, an instinct for freedom and a sense of humor. Once in a while, in easy conversations with simple men, these qualities rise to the surface like a saving laughter, guffawing straight into history's long face. I had such a conversation in Milan's Piazza Loreto.

The Porci and the Pazzi. In that Piazza, four red Esso pumps mark the world's most famous gas station. Just over two years ago, from the steel beams above the pumps, eight bloody corpses hung upside down like butchered pigs while an angry crowd spat and cursed. Today, the only reminders of that grim day of mob judgment are the names of Mussolini, Petacci, Starace and the five others, scratched into the half-rusted white paint on the steel beams. The words look like some bawdy joke pranksters might scrawl on washroom walls. A big fat man with a half-grown beard and bright green eyes and a short, wiry, blond man with mild blue eyes work at the station. The fat one recalled:

"It was a great day, but it was not great enough. We need to hang up a lot more before things go right in this country. Oh, yes, I voted Socialist. But you know, Socialism's no good for this country either. Right after we hung up those porci the workers here in Milan took over some of the factories and they found they didn't know what to do with them. They had to call the management back. I am a Socialist because I like what the Communists say, but I don't believe them."

The little man cut in: "Only the ignoranti are Communists. Anyone with any brains knows the Communists in Russia have been murdering millions of people and those still alive are starving. You must remember most Communisti are pazzi (fools). They think Stalin is a god. Why, they're more superstitious than the toost ignorant Italian peasant."

The fat man filled up another gas tank, and glanced up at the sinister steel girder. He said with a shrewd twinkle: "I don't really want to hang up a lot of people. We just want some quiet. Maybe some of us want to go to Argentina or become peasants in the country. Right now, we just want to be left alone for a while."

The Price of Victory. As I walked away, I noticed on the wall beside the gas station a big hammer and sickle splashed on in red paint. I looked back questioningly over my shoulder at the men and pointed to it. The big one just shrugged his fat shoulders with a "Che importa?" (so what?).

The Communists had to do a lot more fighting to win Italy. But the West would have to fight even harder.

*Named for the late Leland Stanford by a manservant grateful for a Stanford bequest that set him up in business.

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