Show of Force

In Rome last week, the supporters of democracy displayed courage. For two hours on a cloudy Sunday, 25,000 bronzed, well-fed, well-armed men paraded through Rome. There were red-plumed carabinieri on white horses, steel-helmeted army regulars riding along in maroon Dodge trucks, grim parachutists in steel-grey battle dress, over 100 tanks (including Shermans), scores of armored cars, 80 rumbling pieces of heavy artillery, and even 150 carrier pigeons, traveling in a special truck.

The army's apparent vigor surprised the wildly cheering crowds and the Communists. Said Defense Minister Cipriano Facchinetti: "Rehabilitation of our armed forces has been achieved silently but efficiently in the past few months." Interior Minister Mario Scelba announced that the government had 330,000 men under arms, including a special shock force of 150,000 ready to take on the Communists if they tried to make trouble on election day. When the parade reached the end of the Via dell Impero, it suddenly swung left and marched through the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, where Communist headquarters are located. From their windows, Red leaders watched grimly.

Limited Violence. The parade (which was duplicated in smaller sizes at Milan, Turin, Padua and Florence) put the Communists in a box. The delicate question facing them was just how much disorder it would be wise to make in the last phase of the campaign. Some violence would help them scare timid voters from the polls, especially Italy's heavily anti-Communist women. But if Communists went too far, they might only provide an excuse for the government to use its force and postpone the elections until the ERP starts to raise Italian living standards and thus lower Communist voting strength.

So the Reds last week were engaged in limited violence. Near Milan, a Red "punitive expedition" went fascist-hunting, ran into a farmer with a gun who killed two of the Communists; at Savona, a shoeshine man tossed a hand grenade into a crowd of churchgoers, killed an old woman; on Pantelleria Island, when a Communist-led crowd stormed the tax collector's office, police killed three men in the melee. Police found numerous Communist arms caches.

In anti-Communist Sicily, many Reds, fellow travelers and some innocent labor leaders had been ambushed and killed. Last month, an obscure village labor organizer called Placido Rizzotto disappeared. Last week, Communist Labor Boss Di Vittorio chose to make a national issue of Rizzotto, threatened a general strike unless he turned up by this week.

Limited Help. Premier Alcide de Gasperi, campaigning (by airplane) up & down Italy, left no doubt that Rome's show of force was no empty gesture. With unexpected vigor, he exhorted Italians not to let themselves be scared away from the polls by Communist rough stuff. His theme: either all will vote freely, or none will vote at all. Shivering in a chill spring wind that swept across the ruins of Monte Cassino, he cried: "Form a bulwark! . . . Defend Italy. . . . Vote for Italy. . . ." In Sardinia, before stocking-capped old peasants and natty coal miners fresh from their showers, he said with imposing understatement: "I am dissatisfied with the present state of public order." Before shepherds of Frosinone, he cried: "If it is a question of force, remember the force is in the hands of the government."

There were some signs that the Communists had lost ground. One day last week at Lecce, when Red Boss Palmiro Togliatti denounced the Marshall Plan, he was booed into silence. In a sudden bullish mood, the Rome stockmarket rose higher than it had been in three months. At Gorizia, a crowd of 1,000 Italians broke up a Communist meeting, then stormed toward the nearby Yugoslav border shouting: "Long Live America, Death to Tito!" Frontier guards had to squash the impromptu invasion. Customs officials discovered a cargo of 8,000 guns, 4,000 cases of ammunition and one Communist agitator aboard a ship from Yugoslavia. On the same day, the sooth U.S. relief ship arrived. Il Giornale d'ltalia headlined the moral: "HELP FOR ITALY. FROM THE U.S., GRAIN AND COAL. FROM YUGOSLAVIA, ARMS AND AMMUNITION."

Two weeks before its fateful election, Italy was taut with the danger of civil war.

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