The Quiet Sardinian

After Nikita Khrushchev's headline-hogging trip to the U.S., the visit last week from Italy's Prime Minister Antonio Segni was bound to be recorded on the inside pages. Indeed, Premier Segni was near to getting lost himself. Foul weather forced his Alitalia airliner into Boston, and U.S. protocol officers had to scoot up from Washington to pick him up and fly him back. When he finally got to Washington, the weather was so bad that the welcoming ceremonies--honor guard, music and all--had to be held in a hangar at the MATS terminal. Moreover, a few Italians were miffed because President Eisenhower was not at the field (he sent Vice President Nixon to greet Segni), and because the President took off on his California vacation right after having Segni to lunch. The person who seemed to mind least was Antonio Segni himself. Small and frail at 68, Sardinia-born Statesman Segni glided through his visit with a quiet confidence drawn from years of achievement.

The son of well-to-do landowners, Segni became a professor of civil law, no sooner swung into politics in his 30s than he swung right out again in the face of Italian Fascism. He left his law books once more to help found the Christian Democrat Party in the 1940s, and since 1944 has regularly held Cabinet posts in the government. As Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in 1950, he drafted the land-reform bills that helped turn back Italy's rising Communist tide, ultimately freed nearly 2,000,000 acres of privately owned land for distribution among 150,000 peasants. Two hundred and fifty of those acres came from Segni's own estate.

With Italian-American relations solid and satisfactory, Premier Segni actually had no great and pressing problems to hash over with President Eisenhower (the talks, said the communique, were held "in a spirit of close friendship"); he got a chance before the National Press Club to express his hope that Italy would play a role in a future summit meeting, and to warn the U.S. against reckless disarmament merely because of Khrushchev's "handshake and a few smiles."

The quiet Sardinian flew back home at week's end as unostentatiously as he arrived. Among his souvenirs: political profit accruing to the first NATO-country Premier to be briefed by President Eisenhower on the Khrushchev talks. He had also the knowledge that the U.S. accounts him a good friend.

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