ITALY: Clear Skies

In city churches and village chapels, pious Italians knelt last week and prayed for rain. The worst drought in centuries was now in its second year.

Italians could think of little else. Thanks to UNRRA, the food supply was a little better than last year. Release of U.S. Army gasoline had improved transportation; southern oranges and lemons were moving north, while northern cheese and butter moved south.

But UNRRA’s help is to end with 1946. The threat of hunger formed the background of disquieting political developments. Democratic forces lost strength when the middle-of-the-road Action Party flew apart in a row between its right wing and moderates. Off went former Premier Ferruccio Parri to form a new middle-class group.

Monarchists gained. Pudgy, bustling Guglielmo Giannini, who skyrocketed his weekly Uomo Qualunque (The Common Man) to an 800,000 circulation by jeering at politicians, finally went political. A day before his Uomo Qualunque anti-politico movement was to hold its first national convention, he joined the monarchist Partito Democratico Italiano.

Writing in the New York Catholic weekly, the Commonweal, Law Professor Max Ascoli, who fled Mussolini’s Italy, called Giannini’s paper neoFascist, explained: “. . . Its substantial permanent characteristic is its hatred of democracy, of competitive political parties. . . . Neo-Fascism tries to debase the people into a rabble kept happy and distracted with solaces and carnivals of all types. . . . Neo-Fascism does not need great leaders of its own. . . .”

Drought, want and insecurity were Italy’s anti-democratic leaders.