Arsenal of Terror

Against the day of revolt, Italy's Communists have piled up a vast store of arms, but it is disappearing fast. Backed by a law banning private possession of arms (maximum penalty: ten years' imprisonment), Italian police and carabinieri began ferreting out the Red arsenals in 1947. They relied on detective work and tipsters, hunted with police dogs trained to spot the scent of the grease that is used in preserving guns. They found what they were looking for in walled-up cellars, under haystacks and manure piles, in football stadiums, cemeteries and abandoned churches. By 1950's end, their haul in light arms was almost enough to have equipped six infantry divisions.

During the Eisenhower visit in January the police made a spectacular haul in Milan's O.M. (Officine Mecchaniche) automotive plant. Inside an old, sealed air-raid shelter were a 45-mm. mortar, five antiaircraft guns, 22 machine guns, twelve barrels of tear gas, hundreds of grenades, many small arms, 82 cases of ammunition. A smart police officer narrowly averted a tragedy by cautioning his men not to switch on a light in the shelter; it turned out to be a booby trap set up to detonate.

Last week an anonymous tip sent the police into Genoa's big Ansaldo shipyards, which they had searched unsuccessfully before. This time they came upon the biggest prize yet. Under a staircase behind a false wall was an underground cavern, and in it were 15 tons of war materiel (including one mountain cannon, 22 heavy machine guns, cases of antitank grenades and time bombs). The passage led to the sea. Police figured the party planned to distribute the arms by boat. On the cavern's wall was the slogan: "These are the weapons of peace."

Elsewhere the authorities found other caches: under an electric crane in Turin's Fiat steel mill, 29 light machine guns and other arms; in a field near the Milan railway line, three Sten and five Bren guns, 80 grenades, etc.; in a zinc coffin buried under the sports field of an auto plant near Milan, one mortar, one small antiaircraft gun, three Bren guns, etc.

Recently the police have been getting more and better tips than they ever got before. They are also finding arms dumped in open fields by comrades who want to get rid of them. The trend, the police guess, may just possibly stem from the party disaffection led by anti-Stalin Deviationists Valdo Magnani and Aldo Cucchi (TIME, Feb. 12). Mused a police officer: "Quite a few Communists seem to be having crises of conscience."

Presumably to lessen such crises among the comrades, Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti, who had been undergoing medical treatment in Moscow, returned this week to Rome.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.