Choose Your Partner

In Italy's Chamber of Deputies, politicians howled with anger at the U.S. "America now needs Tito more than De Gasperi," they shouted. "What is the value of the Atlantic pact?" The cause of their rage was U.S. unwillingness to give full support to Italian claims on the Free Territory of Trieste.

The Free Territory was one of the oldest pawns in the cold war. The U.S. had influenced the Italian elections of 1948 by announcing that it favored return of the whole Free Territory to Italy. Yugoslavia also had claims on the Trieste area, and Yugoslav troops occupied the southern part of it, known as Zone B. When Marshal Tito left the Russian camp, the U.S. and Britain, whose forces occupy the rest of the Free Territory, had reconsidered. Anxious to keep Tito firm in his heresy, they began to urge Italy and Yugoslavia to settle the dispute.

The Yugoslavs, determined to keep Zone B, treated it as a Yugoslav province. A fortnight ago they staged an election for a new regional council; merger of Zone B into Yugoslavia was the real question at stake.

On election day, Slovene inhabitants of the hill town of Buie performed the kolo, a whirling Serbian national dance. When Italian reporters appeared in the town square the people stopped dancing, beat up the Italians and resumed the kolo. When British journalists appeared, the townsfolk mauled them, too, and danced some more.

Not surprisingly, candidates nominated by Marshal Tito's People's Front in Zone B were mainly unopposed, invariably elected.

Italians asked what the U.S. was going to do about this. The answer, though gently phrased, seemed to be "Nothing." All Italy promptly broke into an uproar, and the prestige of Premier Alcide de Gasperi's government took a nose dive.

Meanwhile, the U.S.S.R. had come back into the game with a note to the U.S.: all occupation forces must be withdrawn from Trieste. Purpose of the Russian note was to heighten the U.S. embarrassment, and it achieved that aim. The embarrassment would continue until the U.S. exerted enough pressure on Yugoslavia and Italy to make them agree to a settlement of the Trieste question.

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