Militant Mouse

Mario Scelba, Italian Minister of the Interior, gripped the white steering wheel and stepped on the gas. His jet-black car shot ahead along the die-straight highway at 80 m.p.h., leaving his escort of police motorcycles and official limousines far behind. Scelba was racing into the "triangle of death," a section of Emilia in northern Italy, the notorious Red stronghold where scores of men have been killed in violent flare-ups between Communists and antiCommunists. There were plenty of Reds who would have liked to kill Minister Scelba himself.

As Scelba reached Modena, he got out of his car to look carefully at a poster. Under the caption "Scelba is in Emilia. He mustn't get out!" a cartoon showed a mouse with Scelba's face caught in a trap. Grimly Scelba climbed back into his car and drove on--still further into the trap.

48 or 52? No mouse is Sicilian Mario Scelba. A lawyer and Popular Party worker before the war, he has emerged as the strongest anti-Communist force in Premier Alcide de Gasperi's coalition cabinet. He has rebuilt Italy's police into a wellarmed, well-disciplined force nearly a quarter-million strong; his famed celere, or motorized police, whizz through Italian cities in jeeps, cracking down relentlessly on Communist street brawlers. To Communists, he is Public Enemy Numero Uno.

Yet Scelba drove on serenely. At Carpi, scene of repeated Red-led strikes, he got out and walked through the market place, alone and unprotected. When the crowd recognized his balding head and his hooked Sicilian nose, some people sneered, but most, admiring his guts, applauded. When Scelba's police escort finally caught up with him and asked anxiously whether they had better clear the square, Scelba just laughed and walked on, still alone.

Later he drove on to Campagnola. While he was eating a hearty lunch accompanied by a quart of sparkling Lambrusco, a Communist leader burst into his room. "How old are you?" snapped the Red. "Forty-eight," answered the Minister of the Interior, looking up from his meal. "Ah," sighed the Communist, "You made me lose a bet. I just laid down a thousand lire that you were 52 at least." Scelba's bodyguard, who this time had managed to stay by his side and were fully expecting an assassination attempt, sighed with relief, and Scelba took a nap in a chair before an open window, a perfect target for any Red marksman.

Scelba did not display his courage just for the fun of it. He had a political point to make, and in several speeches during his visit to Emilia he explained the point. Said he: "Communists speculate on the fears of others . . . The Italian Communists are only a minority [but] with threats and violence they intimidate large sections of the population . . . We must kill this inferiority complex which persists where Communists are concerned . . ."

"In Times of Calamity." To help kill the inferiority complex, Scelba had a plan. Scelba wanted to establish a civilian volunteer force, a kind of home guard, that could protect Italy against Red sabotage. It was Scelba's answer to recent well-documented reports that the Communists are training guerrillas and saboteurs in the hills.

Scelba wanted his new force to be nothing like the Fascist blackshirts (although a lot of Italians thought that was precisely what the doctor ordered). Said Scelba firmly: "We reject any idea of private [armed] organizations, of Fascist methods which, after 20 years of Fascist rule, left behind them an Italian Communist party which is the largest outside Russia. Anyone hoping for a . . . return to Fascist methods unwittingly hopes for an increase in Communist strength . . ."

Some of Scelba's political colleagues, who accuse him of strong-arm methods, were not reassured by his non-Fascist pledge. Back in Rome after his Emilian foray, Scelba faced Giuseppe Saragat, mild, middle-of-the-road Socialist leader, and two of his followers who hold posts in the cabinet. Saragat accused Scelba of trying to give "a sop to Fascism." Scelba took three days to soothe Saragat. Then Randolfo Pacciardi, Italy's able Defense Minister, made difficulties: he wanted Italy's regular armed forces strengthened before any volunteer forces were launched. Scelba brought him around by promising to support the armed forces' request for additional funds.

Finally, after a stormy cabinet session, Scelba triumphed; his plan was okayed. The new civil defense corps, with units in each Italian community, would (by official definition) "protect the population in times of calamity." In order to avoid the parliamentary squabble that would inevitably accompany the establishing of a new agency, the government simply put the new force under an existing agency--appropriately enough, Italy's Directorate of Fire Fighting.

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