"Push & Suggest"

When Premier Alcide de Gasperi's Christian Democrats won the elections last April, the West sighed with relief and turned to other concerns. Indifference was premature. Last week the Communists were renewing their campaign of sabotage.

Red Rash. When De Gasperi outlined the points of his new government's program in the Chamber of Deputies, Communist deputies shrilled a dissenting antiphon. The Premier said that he would maintain law & order; they shouted: "How many innocent workers have been murdered? " De Gasperi pledged cooperation with ERP; the Communists screamed "Imperialism! War!"/-

Communists did more than talk. A new rash of Communist-inspired strikes broke out in Italy. In the north, dairy and ricefield workers struck. Sicilian dockworkers and Sardinian coal miners threatened to join. In the Red fortress of Bologna, Communists called a 24-hour general strike. The objects of Communist parliamentary and trade-union tactics: to trip up the government as it inched toward stability.

In the long run, De Gasperi knew that to prevent a swing to Communism he would need to deliver some promised reforms. The program he announced last week included general promises: land reform (distribution of big estates) and reclamation, stricter tax collections, relief for Italy's two million unemployed.

Green Peas. Among the 19 ministers in De Gasperi's new government was sad-eyed, scholarly Giuseppe Saragat, who would try to see that those promises were carried out. His "Party of the Little Green Peas"* had won nearly half of Italy's four million Socialist voters from Communist Collaborator Pietro Nenni. Saragat was in the new cabinet as Vice Premier and Minister of Mercantile Marine.

"I believe the Prime Minister wants to go ahead with necessary changes," said Saragat last week. "Otherwise I wouldn't have entered the cabinet. Our task is to give him all possible support, to push and suggest that which will benefit the working classes." Of Communists, Saragat has said: "Nothing separates us--except a great abyss." But his alliance with De Gasperi was an uneasy one. Said the Premier recently of his colleague: "Saragat sometimes seems to hear the call of the wild."

The most compelling spur to reforms by the new government was the watchfulness of Italy's voters. A middle-aged shopkeeper in Rome's Trastevere slum district put it this way last week: "I voted for De Gasperi because I don't want to see Communists in power. But if we don't get something out of it this time, I'm going to vote for the Communists and see what they can do."

/- One piece of Communist propaganda recently miscarried. Even Italian Communists couldn't stomach the stick sentimentality of a Russian propaganda movie. It showed a Russian airman ready to die in glory while Comrade Stalin, over the radio, urged him to live on. Interrupted Italian comrades" We want Walt Disney!"

* Italians pronounce the initials of Saragat's Partito Socialista del Lavoratori Italiani (Socialist Party of Italian Workers) as piselli (peas).

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