Illness in the Family

America's attention, so long fixed in morbid fascination on the sickness of France, was rudely diverted last week to an even more dramatic threat to the family of the West. Democracy is seriously ill in Italy.

The crisis could be dramatized in cold, simple arithmetic: the Christian Democrats, who govern Italy, hold only 44.4% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Italy's Communist Party, the largest, strongest, richest and smartest this side of the Iron Curtain, controls 36.9%. With a switch of only 24 seats--4%--from the center to the Communist-controlled side (i.e., Communists and the Red Socialists of Pietro Nenni), the Red left would be the dominant bloc in Italian politics. And on the far right, with 4.9% of the Chamber's seats, sit the neo-Fascists--often willing helpers in Communism's war on parliamentary democracy.

The tragedy is that in this perilous position democracy's defenders, the Christian Democrats, are themselves riven by conflicting philosophies, contradictory aims and quarreling personalities. For six months they have hardly governed, and merely held on to power by a melancholy juggling of parliamentary numbers. Order, purpose and initiative trickled out of government like sand whispering through the neck of an hourglass. Last week the whisper grew to a crash. Premier Giuseppe Pella and his government resigned; Italy was left leaderless.

Contrast to France. Though the crash was long in the making, it hit the Western nations with the jolt of grim surprise. Outsiders had grown accustomed to the idea that democracy had taken firm footing in postwar Italy. Over nearly eight postwar years, wily old Alcide de Gasperi, expertly pulling the strings of governmental bureaucracy and party politics, built his defeated country into a respectable, economically vigorous and politically forceful ally of the West. On the surface, Italy seemed a healthy contrast to perpetually ailing France.

The first warning came in last summer's elections. The extreme left and extreme right gained strength. The Christian Democrats' three minor-party allies were crippled. The Monarchists took 26 more seats (for a total of 40) away from the Christian Democratic right--and thereby earned themselves the bitter enmity of Democrat de Gasperi. By a hair, 55,000 votes out of 28 million, the De Gasperi coalition missed winning the parliamentary bonus which De Gasperi's electoral reform law held out to any party or coalition winning more than 50% of the popular vote. De Gasperi could not assemble a majority to govern.

Yet he really had won, and the voters didn't know it. That startling fact illustrates the present muddle of Italian politics. The De Gasperi coalition actually polled more than a majority of the gross vote--some 52%--and was entitled to a bonus, which would have given De Gasperi 657 of the seats. He did not claim it. The Communists had cannily challenged 1,300.000 ballots--three times more than they challenged in the 1948 elections. The bulk of the questioned ballots are known to be legally pro-De Gasperi, entitling the democratic coalition to about 70 seats held by the Communists, and some scattered others. But the electoral reform law itself (called everywhere the "fraud law") was so unpopular, the risks and difficulties of trying to oust 70 well-entrenched and improperly seated Communists from power so great, that the Christian Democrats feared to press their legal right, and concealed their own triumph. To this day. the facts of the ballot recount have not been mentioned in any Italian newspaper.

The Caretaker. Last August Giuseppe Pella got power chiefly because he promised not to exert it. He is a Christian Democrat, and he served for five years in De Gasperi's government as the brilliantly successful keeper of the budget. But Giuseppe Pella had no political organization of his own, no party faction behind him. The party did not choose him to be Premier. It was not even consulted in advance. Pella's old friend and mentor, President Luigi Einaudi, tapped Pella because he merely wanted someone to govern as a caretaker while the Christian Democrats settled among themselves on a more permanent Premier.

To Pella's surprise, he found the job to his liking. To Italy's surprise, he became almost immediately popular. His round, beaming face blossomed from newspaper and magazine front pages. Deputies in Parliament--even the thundering Communists--were charmed by his quiet yet firm courtliness. His popularity leaned dramatically over Trieste. Many decided that here was a man strong enough to put together a government that would attack Italy's problem No. 1: the Communists.

But as the excitement over Trieste faded (largely because the U.S. and Britain would make no move for fear of offending Yugoslavia's Dictator Tito), the basic weakness of Pella's position began to overtake him. A caretaker can dust the desk, but he cannot move the furniture or redecorate the place. Italy was full of continuing discontent--over the 2,000,000 unemployed, over low wages and high costs, over clericalism n. anticlericalism in politics, over land reform. The caretaker Premier, by the nature of his position, had neither program nor machinery for doing much about it.

Against his lack of program and lack of action, the Communists seemed more and more the one group that knew what it wanted to do. Palmiro Togliatti's Communists are rich (among other funds, the party gets millions a year from their commercial monopoly as middlemen for all Italian trade with Eastern Europe); they are minutely organized and cleverly led, even able to turn to advantage such anti-Communist events as financial aid from the U.S. Example: a U.S. contract recently allowed a closed-down factory in Milan to reopen; because they had been shouting for its reopening, the Reds took public credit for the event.

Inside Pella's own party, a new faction began to be heard from. It called itself the "Democratic Initiative," and was headed by a dynamic little Tuscan, Minister of Interior Amintore Fanfani, 45, who as Secretary of Agriculture under De Gasped had been a prime mover in land reform, and through it built himself an efficient machine and a strong following on the left edge of the Christian Democratic Alliance. Democratic Initiative is vigorous and devout, and it has grown by leaps and bounds. It is closely allied with the militant leftist Catholic movement, which centers around Florence's popular Mayor Giorgio La Pira and Bologna's influential Cardinal Lercaro. Fanfani's group wanted Pella to oppose Communist growth by more vigorous social reforms.

Think It Over. Three weeks ago, Pella decided to stop being caretaker and stay awhile. But when he tried to put together a program and a Cabinet, he ran into difficulties in his own party. To the conservative, lira-conscious businessman from the north, the proper direction to turn seemed to be right, where rest the precious 40 votes of the Monarchists. Premier Pella decided to replace a Fanfani man who was Secretary of Agriculture with Salvatore Aldisio, a wealthy Sicilian who had voted against land reform and was favored by the Monarchists. Alcide de Gasperi advised Premier Pella against the appointment: "You had better think that over again." Other Christian Democratic leaders protested: Aldisio would be acceptable in some other job, but not Agriculture. Pella insisted: Aldisio in Agriculture, and the party could take Pella's word that land reform would not be sabotaged. Amintore Fanfani finally put the issue to the party steering committee. By 24 to 1, it voted against Pella--an unexpectedly sharp victory for Fanfani and his Democratic Initiative.

At that point, the few fortunate enough to be plugged into Italy's new (and limited) television network got a strange and unintended hint of what was happening.

By some quirk of electronics during a thunderstorm, a private radio-telephone line from De Gasperi's house was connected with the TV network. "You had better go and tell him," said the voice of De Gasperi over several hundred TV loudspeakers. "I had rather not," said the other voice. "You know what an uncivil type he is." De Gasperi insisted: "Well then, ask someone else to tell him." Apparently the two were discussing how to break the bad news to Aldisio.

Through more normal channels, Premier Pella heard the party's decision. "I shall now draw my own conclusions." said he. He summoned his Cabinet and calmly announced that they were through. He rode to the Palazzo Quirinale to hand his resignation to President Einaudi (it does not take effect until a new government takes over, but Pella may initiate nothing of consequence in the interim). Then he telephoned De Gasperi to report that he had quit.

"Why did you do it?" asked the old ex-Premier. "You didn't have to, you know." "But." answered Pella, "it was too bitter a pill to swallow." De Gasperi, who had worked for months to keep party and Pella together, replied sadly: "If you only, knew how many bitter pills you. Pella, have made me swallow." Within 24 hours. Pella boarded a northbound train for Biello and his aged mother. "Now," said he. "I can do some skiing."

A Historical Example. At first Italians showed resentment of Alcide de Gasperi for the quick and unceremonious demise of the Pella regime; his picture was even booed in some newsreel theaters. The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano took the rare step of publicly entering a political scrap--on Pella's side. But with surprising haste much of the newspaper following which Pella had built up petered away within hours of his resignation; two of Italy's strongest newspapers came out next morning against any attempt to reform the government along Pella's lines. "No rightist solution is possible in the present situation," said Turin's La Stampa, which is owned by Fiat. Added Milan's respected Corriere della Sera: "The rank and file of the party, supported by a large percentage of the clergy and even the episcopate, have turned left ... at the same time that the Christian Democratic Party hierarchy has stood still . . ."

In a confusion of class bitterness and divided counsels, Italy began the delicate search for someone to govern. Narrow as they were, the figures still favor the democratic center. Strong enough to gain from dissension, patient enough to wait for chaos, the Communists are still neither able nor willing to take power legally. The far right is imposing enough to harass, but too weak to be a threat. Only the Christian Democrats have the chance to patch together a parliamentary majority.

The question of the moment is whether the Christian Democrats will heal divisions, bury grudges and seize their chance. The first sign in Rome was hopeful.

Twenty-four hours after the government fell, the Christian Democratic high command gathered in the home of Alcide de Gasperi. It briskly agreed on a program (more reforms, more vigorous measures against Red-led violence, unemployment remedies), and nominated Fanfani as its candidate for Premier. Fanfani, the shrewd politician, hoped to widen his support by getting Right-Winger Attilio Pic-cioni as his Vice Premier. There were signs this week that politicians from left to right might have become enough aware of the common peril to rally around Fanfani. Even one group of Monarchists hinted that they might support him--or at least refrain from opposing him.

If the sense of the common peril proves lasting, democracy in Italy may yet survive those who seek to kill it, those whose discordant actions discredit it, and those who are indifferent to its plight.

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