Glowing Ember

The problem of Trieste, a grey ember caught in the crosswinds of national desire, brightened to an ugly red glow last week.

The first gust blew out of Yugoslavia. Dictator Tito, heady from a long succession of diplomatic successes with the West since he broke with the U.S.S.R., opened a new campaign to best Italy in the postwar struggle for control of the beautiful old port city and the 287-square-mile Free Territory of Trieste which surrounds it. Belgrade's press and radio blossomed with demands for "a serious reconsideration" of Yugoslavia's conditions for a settlement. "Italy," snapped the official newspaper Borba, "is completely disqualified as a partner to whom it is worth making concessions." With fanfare, it was announced that Tito himself was about to reveal brand-new Yugoslav demands.

Troops & Ships. None of this ruffled any hairs in Washington, Paris or London, where for five years the policy had been to make believe that the Trieste issue was not there at all. But the new Italian government of Premier Giuseppe Pella took the hints to mean the worst--that Tito was preparing for outright annexation of Zone B, the southern half of the territory, which has been in Yugoslav control since World War II. From Rome went orders to the army and navy: two to three divisions of Italian troops along the Yugoslav border were put on the alert, and a cruiser and two torpedo boats were dispatched to Venice, just across the Adriatic from Trieste.

Belgrade fired back with angry notes-five of them in four days--protesting the Italian "military demonstration" and warning that Yugoslavia might take "corresponding measures" on its side of the border. But Giuseppe Pella stood firm. While Trieste is chiefly an issue of pride and internal prestige with Tito, to Italians it is an issue of deep and emotional nationalism--the one issue that unites all Italians except the Communists (and even many of them).

Even if he had wanted to, Pella could not skitter or give ground. And he did not want to. Though he likes to refer to his government as a "transition" government, Pella does not intend it to be transitory. Having won support that even the renowned Alcide de Gasperi failed to win before him, the new Premier felt that he could consolidate his regime with a favorable Trieste settlement. To fortify him Pella had the solemn 1948 declaration of the U.S., Britain and France, in which they renounced previous positions and advocated the return of the Free Territory of Trieste to Italy.

"Stab in the Back." But from Washington last week, at the most indelicate moment possible, came a thunderbolt that jolted Italy to almost desperate anger. Questioned about the U.S. stand on the five-year-old promise of all Trieste for Italy, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles implied that the U.S. might consider some other plan for the territory (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Italy's government and press were horrified at what appeared to be a retreat from the unequivocal declaration of 1948. "This," cried Rome's conservative Il Tempo, "sets off irreparably from the U.S. a block of 47 million inhabitants of one of the most civilized countries in the world [and] . . . opens the rosiest horizons for Malenkov and Togliatti." One Italian newspaper flung a well-remembered phrase back at the U.S. "Stab in the back!" it said.

Although Foster Dulles later tried to shovel back some of the ground he had scooped from under an allied government that was sorely in need of support (by saying that U.S. policy had not really changed), the damage had been done. And Belgrade happily seized on it. At week's end Communist Tito traveled to the village of Okragljica, only 25 miles from the Trieste boundary, and before 250,000 Yugoslavs announced that he was withdrawing all his past compromise proposals and demanding a new one even less acceptable to Italy: internationalization of the Port of Trieste and outright annexation of the rest of the territory by Yugoslavia.

Unless he uses force, which he promised not to do, Tito cannot make his demands stick. But unless the Western powers replace their lassitude and ineptitude about Trieste with some diplomacy, they stand in great danger of losing Italy as a firm friend and cold-war ally.

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