ITALY: After Two Months

Before leaving for a visit to his home town inSicily last week, Italy’s Premier Mario Scelba sent strict word aheadthat no fuss was to be made over him. But the folks back home inCaltagirone, where Scelba’s aged mother still lives, paid no attention.They greeted their fellow townsman outside the town with a triumphalfanfare of trumpets and drew him through the streets in a ceremonial coach, bright with caparisonedhorses and liveried postillions. As the Premier stood on a balcony toaddress his old neighbors, a blaze of electric lights spelled out themessage: “Viva Scelba!”

Such a greeting was a welcome change for sober-sided Mario Scelba, whosepublic appearances in the recent past—and his face on newsreelscreens—have more often been greeted by Communist-led hisses than bycheers. At the end of his first two months in office, Italy wasbeginning to feel different about the quiet but resolute onetimeInterior Minister now its Prime Minister. The nation as a whole showedno likelihood as yet of echoing the enthusiasm of Caltagirone, but itwas beginning to nod in pleased approval at the vigor and efficiency hehas injected into its government.

Decisions for Dodgers. Mario Scelba’s four-party coalition has dared tomake decisions which no previous Italian government had thought it niceto face up to. It has stopped dodging around the corners of theCommunist problem and has faced the issue squarely by spotlighting theCommunist conspiracy as an alien program, directed and abetted fromabroad. When the Ministry of Defense recently caught seven spies inFoggia. the government saw to it that the newspapers got the full storyof how they were trained in a Russian spy school in Prague.

Scelba’s practical moves against the Communists entrenched in Italy’sown economy have been equally telling. He decreed that some 300state-paid employees now on loan to predominantly Communist unions ofgovernment workers must go back to work for the government itself. Hethreatened to remove state backing from the Red-ridden Italian filmindustry. When Scelba set out to reclaim some 1,300 pieces ofconfiscated Fascist property now occupied by the Communists, heeffectively quashed Red objections by urging that the reclaimedproperties be turned into badly needed schools. Last week the newPremier made plain his identity with the West by urging Italians toratify EDC without waiting for a settlement on Trieste.

Jail for Dodgers. Economically, Premier Scelba has also given Italiansnew heart and new hope. Previous administrations had compiled vastreports on poverty and the unemployed, one 13 volumes thick, the other,twelve. Scelba put the authors of these works on the job, one asMinister of Finance, the other as Minister of Labor. Upcoming as aresult is a whole program of new legislation: a self-liquidatinghousing scheme larger than anything previously planned in postwarItaly; a vigorous new set of tax laws, which for the first time willprovide jail sentences for such blatant tax dodgers as those whoshocked all Italy during the unfolding of the Montesi scandal (TIME,March 22-29).

Scelba still sits on the narrow perch of a 16-seat majority. But, saidone of his increasingly confident aides last week: “We’re proceeding onthe idea that if the government does a good job, it will gain strengthas it goes along.” It could already claim a good start.