What Now?

Italy's forlorn Government shuffled up from Salerno, creaked into a new seat at Rome. Bearded, bitter Premier Ivanoe Bonomi and his fellow ministers held their first meeting in the greystone Palazzo del Viminale. It was an unhappy, feckless af fair. Almost a year after Italy's surrender, little more than a month after the ousting of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Italy's Government had neither power nor responsibility. It could do little without Allied permission. It administered in name, under the cloud of defeat, under the weight of the Allies' unpublished armistice.

Burden of the Vanquished. Italians who understood the harsh terms of the armistice cried aloud. They complained that anti-Fascist Italians were being done a gross injustice. They declared (with some reason) that the terms had been drafted at Casablanca, when no one foresaw Italy's quick collapse. They wanted Italy to have the full status of a willing cobelligerent and an ally against the Germans. Loudest of the outcries came from the Socialist Avanti's Editor Pietro Nenni. Wrote he: "We in Italy are finding how superficial, summary and empirical are Allied ideas of Europe's problems."

Burden of the Victors. In short, what the Italians wanted was full nationhood, and they wanted it while their late enemies were still fighting their late Allies, the Germans, on Italian soil. Such demands inevitably irritated Frenchmen who had not forgotten Mussolini's stab in the back, Britons and Americans whose comrades had lately fallen under Italian fire, Greeks and Yugoslavs whom Italians had lately robbed.

Beneath the current angers lay questions which disturbed the Italians and the Allies. After all, what kind of Italy do the victors want? All are agreed, at least in word, that Italy must be democratic. But--a strong Italy, again a power in the Mediterranean? With excellent cause, Britain may well want nothing of the sort. France may not, either. Russia may well prefer a strong Italy--if Rome and Moscow are friendly. High principles and grand cliches will not answer Italy's questions.

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