Friday, Jan. 21, 1966

A Bigger Opposition

After two decades of domination, Italy's Christian Democrats at last seem likely to face a responsible and united opposition. In Naples, 700 delegates of the Social Democratic Party voted to merge with the Socialists of Pietro Nenni, with whom they split in 1947.

The Social Democrats, then headed by Giuseppe Saragat, broke with Nenni because he refused to sever his wartime alliance with Italy's Communists. Leading his party into coalition with the

Christian Democrats, Saragat backed NATO, reconverted to Catholicism in

1962 after the death of his wife, and two years later was elected President of the Republic.

Nenni has mellowed markedly. He renounced the Communists in 1957 (after Hungary), joined a Christian Democratic coalition in 1963, last summer--though still an agnostic--even attended an audience with Pope Paul VI. At last it dawned on Social Democrats and Socialists alike that the gap between them had all but vanished. With Nenni as head of a combined party, the new Socialists would still be far behind the Christian Democrats in voter strength, if the last elections in April

1963 were any guide. But by appealing more and more to Italy's middle class, the Socialists hope that in the next general elections they can steal bourgeois strength from the Christian Democrats, while still preserving traditional links with the workers--who are becoming pretty bourgeois themselves.

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