The Marshal's Interruption

Italy's ancient squares were plastered with political posters, and its streets echoed with speeches and argument. Election time was only four weeks away. Not far from Rome, in the town of Arcinazzo one day last week, a Christian Democratic campaigner lambasted the neo-Fascist M.S.I. Party. There was a stir in the audience; up rose Arcinazzo's best-known citizen. He was Rodolfo Graziani, 70, ex-marshal of Italy, ex-Lion of Neghelli, who came out of prison in 1950 (after serving five of a 19-year sentence for wartime treason) to become one of two honorary presidents of M.S.I.

"It's absurd to talk of a rebirth of Fascism," cried he. "Dictatorships don't grow like mushrooms. You can't have more than one dictatorship a century."

Then, to the surprise of the crowd, M.S.I. Leader Graziani proceeded to deliver an endorsement of the M.S.I.'s de spised opponent, the Christian Democratic government of Premier Alcide de Gasperi. "Only the blind or those in bad faith," said he, "can fail to give the present government credit for the great work it has accomplished in the rebirth of our country."

Next day, pro-Christian Democratic papers gave Graziani's praise big play, while chagrined leaders of the neo-Fascists hustled the ex-marshal into Rome to explain his remarks at a press conference. Graziani tried to explain, but simply compounded his heresy. "I praised the work of the Agricultural Ministry for the improvement of mountains--such work as Arcinazzo had never seen before!" said he. He was also grateful for Arcinazzo's roads and new irrigation system, and its government reforestation program. Italy is better armed than ever before, he went on. "It's a fact that today Italy has . . . an army stronger than that of France," said the ex-marshal.

To some Christian Democratic leaders, praise from Fascism's outstanding survivor is tainted praise. The Communists tried to make it seem so. Approval by Graziani, grumbled one of De Gasperi's allies, is not something to be sought, to be valued or to be publicized. But Graziani's unsolicited testimony was undeniably a severe propaganda blow to one of the Christian Democrats' deadly enemies of the right. The M.S.I.'s newspaper did not print a word of their honorary president's comment, and M.S.I. Party workers red-facedly explained that the old Lion of Neghelli is undergoing "a period of depression."

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