The Pallbearers Wore Pink

After 56 years the Italian Socialist Party had returned to its birthplace, Genoa's 16th Century Palazzo Ducale. Its drafty corridors bore the scent of political decay. Had Italian Socialism, corrupted by its alliance with the Communists, come home to die? Its leaders said not--but their expostulations carried little conviction, even to one another. Last week, the evidence of death was strong enough to warrant interment.

"To Discover Our Soul." Against their democratic and humanitarian convictions, the majority of the party had followed cynical Pietro Nenni into a common front with the Communists. Only thus, they argued, could Socialism attain victory. In this bargain the party lost its soul and never collected its price. It was defeated roundly in the April elections. What to do now? Repudiate the Red alliance? Stick to it and shake off the moderate Socialists?

The marble walls of the great Council Hall were red and the draperies in back of the platform were red, and militantly red were the old Socialist hymns blared forth by the phonograph. But the mood of the delegates was a pale pink like the carnations in many of their buttonholes.

Cried little (5 ft.) Right-Wing Leader Giuseppe Romka: "We have become just the boot cleaners of the Commtinists who --if the truth were known--are highly amused with our efforts to discover our soul." A voice from a back row broke in: "Not one soul, but three."

And so it was. The three groups into which the convention broke were Romita's anti-Communists (27%), Nenni's proCommunists (31%), and an aimless, sullen middle-of-the-road group which wanted to avoid the unavoidable decision (42%). The middle-of-the-roaders won, but not before the pro-Communist party secretary, bearded, slate-eyed Lelio Basso, had told them off.

Basso, whose spiritual home is Communism, pointed with approval to Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and said the majority of the Italian Socialist leaders were engaged in "a hybrid, inconsequential, incongruous attempt to preserve or gain personal positions."

As if lashed, the dreary assemblage awoke with screams of wounded pride. Imprecations rattled about the hall like hailstones. Angry old men glared and shook their fists at Basso, who stood slender, confident and amused behind the speaker's desk. A ruddy, portly old Socialist waddled up to the rostrum, his pince-nez and a finger wagging together. Cried he: "You are a clever fellow, Basso, and a good orator, but you have used us like doormats." Mopping his face with a silk handkerchief, Basso surveyed the old gentleman, then shrugged and turned away. The Socialist Party might be dead, but Basso knew where his course lay.

"Utterly Lost." In the front row a little man with trembling lips moaned: "Why have we done this to ourselves? We are lost--utterly lost."

As if to symbolize its political death, the party elected as secretary a man who, through no fault of his own, had not had much of a life. Alberto lacometti joined the Socialists in his student days and the Fascists kicked him out of Italy in 1926, when he was 24. In France he got a job as head gardener at the lush Moulin Bicherel roadhouse. The sight of the idle rich disporting themselves disgusted him and he quit. France kicked him out and he got a job addressing envelopes in Brussels. The Germans chased him for a year, caught him, gave him to Mussolini, who imprisoned him. In his years as an exile lacometti once had a job as a traveling salesman. He says: "I didn't effect a single sale in three months, and came near starving."

Now he has the job of reselling the Socialist Party. He seems to have no ideas of how to start, and the left-wingers complicated his task last week by electing Nenni as the leader of the party group in the Italian Assembly.

From Paris last week came evidence of other Socialist concern with the evidences of death. The Associated Press reported that Socialist Dr. Jean Huet had told the General Council of the Seine Department that as many as 8,000 persons might be buried alive by mistake every year. "He recommended on behalf of the Socialist Party," said the A.P., "that more modern methods of determining death be required."

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