Seething City

Thirty-six hours after royalist General Mario Roatta became a fugitive from Rome's anti-Fascist purge (TIME, March 12), the Communist newspaper, Unita, called upon Italians to demonstrate. To Colosseum Square marched 10,000 men & women. While red flags flapped from the walls that had once looked down on other gladiators. Socialist, Actionist and Communist orators shouted: "The monarchy must fall! We will not leave the streets till a republic is proclaimed!"

Howled the crowd: "Death to the King! Death to Roatta!" An angry column, some 2,000 strong, stormed out of Colosseum Square to the square before the Quirinale. Carabinieri, rifles ready, barred the way. Cried the demonstrators: "Down with the carabinieri" Stones thudded against flesh. Mounted troops pushed back the mob. A machine gun, aimed into the air, chattered ominously. In the scuffle, grenades exploded.

A man screamed with pain, dropped to the pavement. A grenade had exploded prematurely in his hand. On his shattered body was found a Communist Party membership card.

From the Quirinale, an angry column marched to the Viminale (Government headquarters). There a delegation of its leaders, including Unit`a's fiery Editor Velio Spano, who is also a member of the Communist Party's Central Executive Committee, handed Premier Ivanoe Bonomi an ultimatum: immediate and drastic reforms, or resign. Said Bonomi: "This is no time for me to desert. -. ."

Hurriedly the Premier called his four-party (Christian Democrat, Labor Democrat, Liberal, Communist) Cabinet into session. Then Foreign Minister Alcide de Gasperi, chief of the Christian Democrats, handed Vice Premier Palmiro Togliatti. boss Communist, an ultimatum: call off the Communist attack on the Government, or resign. But the Communist Party ordered Togliatti not to resign.

While Rome seethed, the Government decreed a shake-up of the police, a speedup of the purge. The Communists did a triple political somersault: 1) they announced that the slain demonstrator was not a Communist: 2) most of the Communists at the Colosseum, it was said, were not Party members, but belonged to the Movimento Communista (Communist Movement*); 3) they ordered Unit`a's Editor Spano to confess that he had acted not as a Party man but as an "individual."

Fumed the opposition (Socialist and Actionist) press: "Togliatti is two-faced!"

* The Communist Party has always declared that it was not connected with the Communist Movement. But when police raided the latter's headquarters some time ago and found bombs and machine guns walled up and hidden, prominent Communists violently, protested against the raid. Police officials concluded that the official Communists and the Communist Movement were unofficially linked.

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