Asking for Trouble

Italy's Reds dislike Mario Scelba with a special fervor. For Premier Scelba is a double threat: he leans to the left with a program that competes for the workman's allegiance, he is also the tough-minded Interior Minister who in 1948 cowed Italy's rioting Reds with his jeep-riding celere. Last week, as Scelba prepared to ask the Senate and Chamber to confirm his new government, the Communists took after him in the piazza and in Parliament.

Italy's biggest trade union, the Red-led C.G.I.L.. called 24-hour general strikes on the pretext of demanding an overdue wage increase. But several days before the strikes, the new government of Mario Scelba had cut the ground from under them by promising a raise. That did not stop the Reds: they surged into downtown Rome and massed for a march on the Chamber. Scelba was ready: thousands of his celere rushed in, quietly hustled 500 toughs off to jail.

Time to Stop. In Milan and Bologna and elsewhere, despite all the Red threats that they would paralyze the economic life of the country, strikes were only partly effective. And even the minor dislocations irritated more than they impressed. Remarks like "It's time Scelba put a stop to this sort of thing" could be heard as commuters waited for delayed buses.

In the small mountain village of Mussomeii, 47 miles from Scelba's Sicilian birthplace, 900 threadbare townspeople gathered to demonstrate against a new $8-a-year water tax. Egged on by agitators, the crowd tried to storm the town hall; the police, ordered not to use firearms, tossed tear-gas bombs. Mistaking the missiles for hand grenades, the crowd stampeded into a blind alley. In the crush, three women and a boy were trampled to death. The Reds had the martyrs they wanted. They quickly ordered a "National Demonstration of Mourning and Protest," a series of leapfrog strikes in the north, a 24-hour walkout in Sicily.

"Murderer, Swindler." The next afternoon, Scelba went to the Senate to outline his program and to request its support. In a low monotone, he talked in general terms of land reform and of law and order. Communists hooted, shouted and heckled: "Murderer, swindler, cheat." It took Scelba two hours to read a 45-minute speech. It was worse in the Chamber a few hours later. The Reds rose as though by signal, screamed. "Faker, liar! for shame!" and stomped out of the hall.

The Communists' noisy performance was the kind that lent aid and comfort to such sensational U.S. journalistic jobs as Henry J. Taylor's recent This Week article. "Italy Is Going Communist!" U.S. press and politicians, who a few months ago failed to take the Italian situation seriously enough, were now lurching to the other extreme and calling it desperate. But Italy's Demo-Christian leaders are taking a stronger anti-Communist stand; Italy's economy is at a relatively high level. Italy, which is 65% antiCommunist, is by no means ready for a Communist Putsch.

Scelba himself ignored the shouts and disturbances and went on with his speech: "We do not underrate the danger of our situation. But we do not agree with those who write that democracy in Italy is heading toward its doom."

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