ITALY: DEMOCRACY'S STEPCHILD
Clair, Louis
Italy: Democracy's Stepchild By LOUIS CLAIR ITALY has a new government headed by Ferrucio Parri, the almost legendary Partisan leader known as "General Maurizio." It is a National Union...
...But the victory was short-lived...
...but in the North, where the people had shown a remarkable capacity for self-government, it was immediately specified that no important action could be taken without first referring to the Allied commanders...
...On the well-working local administrative machinery, AMG superimposed the military administration which according to the May 19 London Economist for instance, "started by closing down postal services and seems likely to persist in a front-line mentality even where there is no front left...
...In 38 provinces of Southern Italy alone, 2,580,000 olive trees have been destroyed...
...The armistice terms still are unpublished and every step of the government can be vetoed under pretext of "military necessities...
...SOUTHERN Italy is economically ruined...
...But these are precisely the ones who helped the Fascists into power 25 years ago...
...During World War I it was one of the chief war aims to dethrone the Kaiser...
...Since her liberation, Southern Italy has been living under conditions much worse than those prevailing under the Germans...
...And by that they mean to keep things as they are...
...All debates are mere shadow-boxing because the real decisions are not being taken by Italians...
...Recent reports speak of a revival of Fascist propaganda...
...Several Fascist illegal papers already have been discovered...
...Out of 22,000 cattle in the Rome region, only 7,000 are left, and thus milk deliveries have dropped from 300,000 liters to 30,000 liters...
...The local Committees, who had been the clandestine centers of resistance, rapidly became the organizers of the new life...
...They had placed high hopes in the Allies only to find out that they have neither full political freedom, nor freedom from want or freedom from fear...
...AMG propagandists have many tales to tell about the necessity of teaching the Italians the democratic way of life...
...It is in such an atmosphere that Fascist movements find the ideal breeding ground...
...The AMG administration has one sole and all-embracing aim...
...Everywhere the local Committees of Liberation took power, and 2 days after the liberation of Milan and Turin, street cars were running again and the cities looked almost normal...
...This slogan seems to translate very well the feelings of great masses of deceived and frustrated Italians...
...It is no enviable task to take over the government in Italy...
...When leaders of the parties of the Left, like the Socialist Pietro Nenni, recently attempted to come from Home to Northern Italy to speak to their adherents, they were arrested because of a ban on all political meetings...
...The working-class family is forced to spend much more than it earns in order barely to survive, and thus all family belongings are gradually sold...
...Italy has no access to Lend-Lease and practically receives no assistance from UNRRA...
...THE liberation of the North of Italy by the Italian "Volunteers of Freedom" was a real "People's Victory...
...Nearly half of the Italian territory is governed by the American Military Government, and in the other half Allied authorities still have the decisive influence...
...It seems that recently this idea definitely has been driven from their heads...
...The factories in the North have been hardly damaged, and production could start almost immediately if raw materials and some means of transportation and fuel were available...
...The Italian people are pretty much fed up with talk about the virtues of democracy...
...The average daily salary is between 50 and 100 lire, i.e...
...This is the most progressive administration since the fall of Mussolini: the radical North has somewhat stirred the muddy waters of Southern politics...
...It is now estimated that about 300,000 Partisans participated in the liberation of the North...
...Yet, there is little reason to rejoice...
...In a country where so much rebuilding has to be done, unemployment is widespread...
...A second-hand suit can be had at 200 dollars, an amount far surpassing several months' earnings...
...As soon as the Allied armies moved in, the AMG clamped down on the Partisans, who had to give up their weapons in exchange of "certificates of recognition" signed by the grateful Allied commander, the British Marshal Alexander...
...But it can be predicted without difficulties that if the Allies do not send to Italy raw material and food, if they don't take off the lid from the political and social life of the country, if Italy is not allowed to order her own destiny, then a desperate and hungry and deceived people will fall back into the old ways...
...Agriculture is hit even much harder...
...For a few days, Northern Italy, under the Committees of Liberation, enjoyed a regime that could be described as genuine grass root democracy...
...They are embittered and inclined to believe that life holds no hope for them...
...It will be prone to listen to the apostles of a new Fascism of the Red or the White variety...
...For months now, Italy's politics have been going on in a vacuum...
...Yet, she needs raw materials for her plants even more urgently than food...
...now it seems that Britain's main aim is to safeguard the tumbling thrones...
...Blimp mentality that has been predominant in all AMG administrations cannot conceive of grass-root democracy...
...The whole social fabric is disintegrating...
...Transportation is lacking, help is lacking...
...Her children are starving...
...American authorities recently estimated that the average consumer in larger cities now receives about 1,500 calories, i.e...
...It is reported that in Naples inscriptions have appeared on the walls, reading: "Down with everybody...
...They want fewer experts and more raw materials...
...between 50 cents and one dollar, but one egg costs 25 cents, a pound of second-grade meat 5 dollars, a loaf of bread $1.20...
...Prostitution has become widespread...
...Last year, infant deaths reached the incredible rate of 50 per cent (even in India the infant death rate is only 17 per cent...
...The Italians ask what fate is in store for them...
...AMG immediately restrained all local initiative...
...75 per cent of the emergency minimum (2,000 calories...
...It has not been much more than an administrative agency for the Allied occupation authorities...
...it is afraid of popular activity and thus fosters conservative forces...
...They say that if Ttaly were permitted to order her own affairs, the road to recovery would be much less steep than it is now with all the generous help of Allied experts...
...The Partisans had executed a number of leading Fascists in the very first days, but many of those who escaped now are back in power positions...
...Is it Allied policy to make Italy a living body again, or is she supposed to continue as a prostrate and starving country until she is willing to accept all the dictates of British policy makers...
...The family of the average Italian worker receives about half enough income to cover the theoretical cost of a diet of minimum health standards...
...But how can democracy be reborn without political gatherings...
...they ask how it makes sense to bring democracy by backing His Majesty the Governor of the Realm by foreign bayonets...
...It is a National Union government, with all 6 main parties represented, the leaders of the Left occupying key positions...
...that there be no disorder...
...The rising was general and the carefully prepared plans were carried out with remarkable discipline...
...The Italians have not quite gotten over the idea that the Allies came here to liberate them," wrote the New York Herald-Tribune some months as?o...
...THE Florence paper Naziorne del Popolo for June 13, writes: "The people are bearing their troubles as they have borne them for many years...
...Italy has a new government: whether it will be more than the previous shadow governments, mere tools and administrative agencies for outside forces, it is too early to say...
...The British AMG policy to which the U. S. has adhered—although some times rather reluctantly—has been to make Italy safe for the monarchy...
...According to a preliminary "Survey and Census of Industrial Reconstruction," an average of 40 per cent of all industrial plants in Southern and Central Italy has been damaged to an extent that makes production impossible...
...From the banknotes that are circulated by the AMG, carrying the text of the Four Freedoms, in many cases "Freedom from Want" has been erased by derisive hands...
...The black market prices are so high that working class purchases are practically excluded...
...Every Italian government so far has hardly been a government at all...
...THE Col...
...There seems to be no end to inflation...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 28
