"Viva Questi, Viva Quelli!"

The surprise U.S. decision calling for the return of Trieste to Italy caught the Communists badly off-balance. Fortunately for them, Italy's predominantly anti-Red newspapers were closed for five days by a typographers' strike. Communists held a frenzied series of high-echelon meetings, got their answers ready by last week, when the strike ended.

Before 60,000 Romans in the jammed Piazza del Popolo, Palmiro Togliatti, Italy's No. 1 Communist, laid down the new line. Clad in a grey, double-breasted suit, he mounted a flag-draped truck, lashed out in a high-pitched voice against the "tortuous and Jesuitical policy" of the Western powers. "These powers do not want peace on our Eastern frontier," he charged. "Their declaration . . . amounts to ... an invitation to prepare for war." As for Trieste: "I repeat that after April 18 and the victory of the Democratic Front, we shall have peaceful accord with Yugoslavia within 48 hours."

The Hour. Next day, across the Tiber, the white-clad Pope stood on a balcony beneath the brilliant spring sun. Below him lay the immense Piazza di San Pietro and, in its encircling colonnades, a multitude of more than 350,000 people, who overflowed into the adjoining streets and lined the nearby roofs. Overhead swooped two planes, scattering Christian Democrat leaflets urging the listeners to vote; the tolling of St. Peter's eight-foot bell and the music of the Vatican's band stirred the throng, whose banners read "Christ or Death." With raised hands, the Pope cried: "This year of anxiety and peril is the harbinger of world events which, perhaps, will be irreparable. . . . The great hour of Christian conscience has struck! . . . There can be no room ... for pusillanimity or for the irresoluteness of those who believe they can serve two masters. . . . We invite you, Romans, Italians, peoples of the world, to union, concord, love, to thought and plans of peace!"

"Viva il Papa!" roared the crowd, and knelt on the cobbled square to receive the Easter apostolic blessing.

The Choice. Communists tried to counter the church's appeal by adopting an Italian hero who had fought against papal troops. The Red-run Democratic Front took as its emblem the head of Garibaldi, superimposed upon a five-pointed star. This week Christian Democrats distributed leaflets bearing their version of the new Communist emblem. The legend read: "Long live the Democratic Front? Turn it around and you will see the deceit."

But many Italians moved unhappily beneath the weight of their historic decision, which they neither wanted to make, nor felt adequate to face. On a wall outside Naples one Italian trying to escape the inescapable had scrawled: "Viva questi, viva quelli, viva chi vince, viva noi!" ("Long live these, long live those, long live whoever wins, long live us!")

That many Italians, like the wall-scrawler, shrank from the election's heat was understandable. If, however, they thought that the April 18 election day would bring them surcease from the struggle, they would be disappointed. Last week, at Bologna, Luigi Longo, Italy's No. 2 Communist, hurled a warning. Suppose the Communists win? he asked. "We doubt that [the government] will cede power to us. But if they do not cede us the power... we will chase them out...." Since Longo is head of the Red fighting organization, this was close to a threat of civil war.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.