Hope for the Future

Bound for Washington and "a long overdue date with a tennis court and a swimming pool" in Connecticut. U.S. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce left Rome last week increasingly hopeful about Italy's future. "If Trieste can be settled, as I hope it will be," she told reporters before she left, "and if EDC can be ratified by Italy, then this country within the next two years will begin to play a much more active and dynamic role in foreign affairs than at any time since 1948." Premier Mario Scelba's government seems more and more to promise "a stability for Italy that no one could have foreseen three to four months ago." Though the Communist threat has not diminished, Scelba's firm hand and activity of the free trade unions has done much in twelve months to overcome the weakness shown by the center parties at the elections in June 1953.

"The possibilities of the government controlling its own internal difficulties," said Mrs. Luce, "are much better than they were a year ago." The debate on EDC will begin in Parliament this fall at the latest, and the problem of Trieste, she concluded, is "coming closer every day to an acceptable solution."

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