Moratorium

Pietro Badoglio's regime got the strongest shot in the arm it has so far received from the Allies. The Allied Military Government withdrew from Sicily, Sardinia, and the Italian mainland south of the Salerno-Bari line (see map).*

Marshal Badoglio's rule, previously restricted to the Adriatic heel of Italy, was extended to all of these areas, with the following provisos: 1) the Italian administration, both central and local, must be by men of good faith, sympathetic to the Allies; 2) this temporary step involves no Allied commitment to the Marshal or to King Vittorio Emanuele III after the capture of Rome; 3) the Italian armistice continues, subjecting the Badoglio government to military control if necessary.

Over Their Shoulder. The decision to limit AMG rule in Italy goes back to the

Moscow Conference. Subsequently, on Dec. 15, the U.S.-British-Russian-Gaullist Allied Control Commission (then called Advisory Council for Italy) recommended to the Allied military command that the Moscow decision should "promptly" be carried out, agreed on the Salerno-Bari line of demarcation, the three provisos. Reasons: the Allies always intended to grant Italian rule in areas sufficiently remote from the battle zone; they wanted to release AMG personnel for other duties; Russian and other criticism of AMG was too hot to ignore. Finally, said grey-haired, British Lieut. General F. N. Mason-MacFarlane, it was a good thing to "take off General Alexander's shoulders the necessity of having to look backward over his own shoulders."

Badoglio's Victory. The antiroyalist coalition which recently met at Bari (TIME, Feb. 14) established the "Executive Junta of Liberated Italy" and demanded its recognition as the provisional government. Complained the men of Bari: "Fascism ... closed its ranks around the throne . . . and tries to prejudice the udgment [of the Allies]."

But in their present difficulties (see p. 24) Allied military commanders want no major political change. Badoglio, continuing to rule by decree, thanked the United Nations "in the name of the King and the whole Italian people" for their "generosity and confidence." The controlling political fact in Italy was nevertheless still a military fact: the Germans had not been defeated, still controlled more than three-fourths of the Italian mainland.

*Naples and the present battle areas, north of the Salerno-Bariline, and the Mediterranean bases of Lampedusa and Pantelleria remain under Allied rule.

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