Look Homeward!

Travel-worn leather bags stood ready last week in a modest Manhattan apartment. Count Carlo Sforza, urbane, white-bearded, was about to begin a long trip home. Sixteen years ago he and his family were hounded into exile by Fascismo's bullyboys, who burned down their villa and might have murdered them. Now, at 70, Italy's distinguished liberal refugee had been granted Allied permission to go home.

Hour of Tragedy. When Benito Mussolini, the proletarian, marched on Rome in 1922, Carlo Sforza, the aristocrat, 17th count of a venerable line, was Italian Ambassador in Paris. He had reached that post after diplomatic service from London to China and a spell as Foreign Minister. With the Blackshirt government he would have no truck. He resigned as Ambassador, returned to Rome, denounced Fascismo and its dangerous "adventurers" from his seat in the Senate. The Duce said that he could have twelve bullets put into Count Sforza. The Count replied that political murder was inadvisable. But the time came, during the aftermath of the Matteotti murder, to go abroad.

From exile--in France, then England, finally the U.S.--Carlo Sforza crusaded against Benito Mussolini ("a demagogue, a charlatan, a cheap egocentric, a quisling of Hitler") and Fascismo ("an artificial and corrupt house of cards which will fall some day in a few hours"). A patient, humane man, with historical perspective, he believed that his nation had strayed into its most tragic hour, but that in good time the countrymen of Dante and Galileo, Michelangelo and Mazzini, Verdi and Ferrero, would come out all right. "They are grand, they are grand!" he said as the little people of Italy turned from the Blackshirts and their alliance with the Germans.

Exiled Italians looked to him as a leader, chose him last summer as one of the heads of the liberal Action Party that now, under the home-front guidance of doughty Emilio Lussu, is one of the united underground groups struggling to shape Italy's destiny. When chafing Carlo Sforza last week showed Cordell Hull an urgent summons from the Italian underground, the Secretary of State gave permission for the trip home. Said Cordell Hull: "I see, your moral duty is to go. We will be glad if you do. But, of course, you go as a private citizen, without any mission, at your own risk, under your own responsibility."

Hour of Hope. Count Sforza shaped a program for Italy:

>"The first task before all Italians is a union to drive the Germans from the country." To that end he would cooperate with the Allied-supported Badoglio regime. But he preferred to act in Italy as a "private citizen." said that he would not want to serve in the Marshal's cabinet if he could.

>"For the unanimity of the war effort, it is necessary to put the problem of the King and his family on ice for the duration." Carlo Sforza agreed with his old friend, Philosopher Benedetto Croce, who had told an American correspondent in southern Italy that the Royal Family was "ignoble." Said Carlo Sforza: "The greatest mistake of Allied policy is to support the discredited House of Savoy. An attempt by the Allies to force the monarchy on the nation, or to repair its prestige, will cause resentment and future trouble."

>"As soon as the task of liberation permits, there must be free elections. I do not doubt that Italians will vote for a progressive republic." Carlo Sforza had an old man's vision: "When the time comes, there must first be agrarian reform, an end of landless peasants and great estates. The economy of Italy might well be patterned after that of prewar Czecho-Slovakia. A thriving Catholic nation of small landowners and busy workers is the best bulwark against communism."

Carlo Sforza spoke for a group of liberal exiles. How closely he reflected the temper and opinion of Italy's people, and how he might fit into the Allied plan for Italy, he would soon know.

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