ITALY: Vox Populi

In Rome, too, there was a battle. Into the lassitude of falling autumn leaves burst the garish colors of election posters, the shrill sounds of political hoodlumism. One night, when right-wing Socialist Matteo Matteotti tried to speak in a shabby Rome suburb, Communists attacked him and knocked him to the ground (he is the son of Giacomo Matteotti, the Socialist martyr killed by Mussolini’s thugs in 1924, whom the Communists still treat as an idol). Another evening, Communists cornered a group of young Christian Democrats. One Catholic youth of 22 was kicked, beaten and knifed to death (see cut). Daily through Rome’s streets roared big trucks bringing thousands from the city’s slums to Communist rallies—not to fill their empty bellies but to pour down their throats such a gospel of hate as only empty stomachs could digest.

From overhead, Christian Democratic planes showered leaflets. At one meeting, thousands of clenched fists shook angrily at the dark sky; men picked up the fluttering leaflets and, without a glance at their words, lighted them with matches—a hundred little torches blazing in the gloom. The Church helped Premier Alcide de Gasperi’s Christian Democrats as never before. Said one priest from the pulpit: “He who fails to vote commits a most grievous sin. Catholics must see that Christ’s cross and not the hammer & sickle rises above the Campanile of Capitol Hill.”

The result of Rome’s municipal election: the Christian Democratic vote was up to 204,000 (from last November’s 103,000). But as with the Gaullists in

France, their strength did not come from deserting Communists. Instead, it sprang from deserting rightists (Guglielmo Giannini’s Qualunquists, et al.), attracted by the Christian Democrats’newly firm anti-Communist line. The “People’s Bloc” of Communists, left-wing Socialists and assorted minor parties more than held its own with 208,000 votes.

The Communists’ undiminished self-assurance was perhaps best illustrated by an election-day incident. In the Piazza della Trinita de’ Monti, a Communist pollwatcher protested against a reproduction of Leonardo’s Last Supper on the walls of the voting room. This picture, he said, was a violation of the rule against electoral propaganda at the polls. The picture was removed.