Place in the Sun

Enrico de Nicola was a bachelor who loved books, the Bay of Naples, and peace to enjoy them both. When he had finally given in to a persistent telephone bell last week he asked angrily: "What is it? I was reading and sunbathing. Who is it that wants me?"

"The nation wants you," came the answer from a spokesman for Italy's three major political parties.

"You are not the nation," snapped De Nicola. He hung up and retreated to his sunny peace.

In Rome's sweltering Monte Citorio Palace, where the Constituent Assembly met, the three parties refused to accept De Nicola's refusal. He was the one candidate for whom Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists had agreed to vote together. Out of 504 valid votes, De Nicola got 396.

Italy's first President is a 68-year-old lawyer who lives in Torre del Greco, near Naples, with an old nurse who takes care of him. He was President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies when Mussolini dissolved it, never collaborated with the Fascists. Italy well remembered the election speech of this last pre-Fascist President of the Chamber in 1920: "All shall feel their love for this our land--cradle of us all and deathbed of our fathers--grow more tender as crisis threatens. . . ." Scattered critics complained that "he never did anything bad [because] he never did anything at all," that he was a man "with no passions." But even the rockbound royalists of his native Naples now supported "De Nicola's republic."

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