Peace Front

On the train from Rome to Milan sallow, soft-voiced Communist Leader Fausto Gullo could only get an upper berth. A young fellow traveler respectfully offered his lower berth to the former Minister of Justice. But Gullo said: "It's my fault for not having booked early enough. I was late. I'm grateful, but really, one should pay for being late."

This eager mea culpa mood pervaded the entire congress which last week in Milan assembled almost 3,000 Communist delegates from eleven nations. Technically, it was the Sixth National Congress of the Italian Communist Party, but influential guests came from Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France, Britain and Uruguay.

Italy's Palmiro Togliatti, who epitomized the "respectable" (or blue-serge-suit) tactics which failed to gain power in

Italy and France this winter, ably explained the situation: "Comrades, you must learn to criticize more and be criticized more. ... I confess that we committed a sin of naivete." The sin was that the Italian Communist Party had Sacrificed effectiveness for size. It was the world's largest outside Russia, but some of its members were incompletely disciplined. Said Togliatti: "We failed to renew the whole Italian social structure. . . . This error . . . forced us on the defensive when we should have been on the offensive. . . . U.S. imperialism today is attempting formation of a Catholic bloc round the Mediterranean [Italy, France, Spain] to form a spearhead against the Soviet Union. The Vatican, which claims to have been anti-capitalist even in evangelical times, when, to my knowledge, capitalism hadn't begun to exist, is now a strenuous defender of American imperialism. The Pope is hand in glove with Protestant Freemason Truman. Our immediate objective is to prevent formation of that bloc."

How was this to be done? By playing on "the profound anguish which grips all classes at the very thought of a possible coming war." The new Communist instrument, "which will characterize Communist activity throughout the present historical phase," was named the "Peace Front."

"Never Mention Communism." The Peace Front must become a bigger & better Communist machine. This must be achieved mainly through good works (with some Tammany touches). Explained Delegate Remo Scapini of Pisa:

"The great popular front [must be] ready to solve what to harassed village women are vital problems--such small things as the position of the village fountain or the location and measurement of the village washing place. When a woman is head over heels in work, help her get her children to school, call a doctor when someone falls ill. Forget wordy propaganda. . . . Never mention Communism. . . ."

"The Faded Flowerlets." A woman delegate from Naples chimed in: "We in Naples have won to our cause large masses of those poor women who once believed in monarchy by helping them to feed their hungry children, the faded flowerlets who were their dearest pride."

The Peace Front will not be confined to workers. "Homestead Committees" and a "Constituent Assembly of the Land" will try to organize farmers and small landowners. Army, police, magistrates, intellectuals must not be left out. Mauro Scoccimarro, ex-Finance Minister, summed up: "Mere control of ordinary state machinery and bourgeois parliamentary institutions is not enough. There must be something outside Parliament and outside the government capable of controlling and directing both."

"No Iron Curtain." The congress was not all repentance. Pavel Yudin of the Soviet Union delivered a morale-building backslap: "The Central Bolshevik Committee greets the Italian Communist Party, which . . . deserves to be ranked as the vanguard of democratic progress. . . ." For ten minutes the Italian delegates roared: "Viva Stalin!" France's Maurice Thorez led the rhetorical rowdedow. Cried he: "The imperialist reactionary forces of America . . . have instituted gangster methods of tear gas as the first step to war. . . ." (So eloquent was Thorez that even listeners who did not understand French had tears in their eyes.) Cried Bulgaria's Wladimir Popomatov: "No iron curtain shall ever rise between us--none shall raise Chinese walls between progressive eastern and western workers. . . . Forward together, fighters for peace!"

As the congress, working through the days and half the nights, drew to a close, Italian workers brought votive offerings to the leaders on the dais--sacks of flour and rice for the congress' kitchen, an electric iron, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a Fiat car with headlights blazing. Most educational was a toy consisting of three tiny trucks on rails; one was labeled "reaction," and moved only backwards, the second was labeled "conservatism" and did not move at all, and the third was labeled "Socialism and United Peace Front" and zoomed merrily forward.

When the congress broke up, most delegates looked tired but happy. Said Thorez: "An excellent piece of work has been done."

On his trip back to Rome, Fausto Gullo, his penance done, had managed to secure a lower berth.

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