"Testing Bench"

Before some 400 Romans in the Palace of the Conservatori last week, Prime Minister Giuseppe Pella laid down Italy's new demand for settling the simmering, eight-year-old problem of Trieste: a plebiscite to let the divided Free Territory choose between Italy and Yugoslavia.

Like most of the demands and counter-demands flying between Rome and Belgrade these days, the proposal was unacceptable to the other side. Yugoslavia's Tito would hardly agree to a plebiscite in which Trieste Territory's 286,000 Italians would snow under its 93,000 Slovenes. Seasoned Giuseppe Pella had few illusions about that, and his speech was meant not so much for Tito's ears as for Italy's allies in Washington, London and Paris. He was trying to convince them that the future of his new regime, as well as Italy's continued membership in NATO, may well depend on their help to win Trieste, or a goodly part of the Territory, for Italy. "It is time," said he, "for [the U.S. and Britain] to acknowledge . . . [that] this problem bears on the whole of our international policy . . . and is the testing bench of our friendships."

The Premier's words were more than diplomatic bluff. All week at the Palazzo Chigi, the Foreign Ministry, government officials were predicting dolefully that Pella might face ouster when Parliament reconvenes later this month unless he can produce promise of progress on Trieste, the most emotional issue in Italy. Already, Pietro Nenni's Red Socialists, yearning for a chance to swerve Italy from the West to neutralism, were baying that Pella's pro-U.S. policy is a failure and that Italy should dump him and change course.

The Italians, while irritated at U.S. failure to keep the Big Three's 1948 promise to try to give all Trieste to Italy, were even angrier about Britain. They believed that the British, traditionally cool to Italy and openly warm to Tito since his break with Moscow, are inclined to favor Tito's claims on Trieste. (Tito, who again spoke out on Trieste last week, claimed that the British were playing the Italian game.)

If Italian suspicions were true, another fissure was developing in the bond which joins the two great Western allies.

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