Blood in the Streets

The feeling of Italians for Trieste runs deep and broad: it is shared by old and young, by men and women of all parties, by Italians of all social circumstances. Trieste is, and of right ought to be Italian; so runs the universal view. Already ethnologically Italian, it was won from Austria in World War I in campaigns that cost 650,000 dead, 1,547,000 wounded and missing--casualties that are intimately remembered today in every Italian town. Lost in World War II and promised to Italy once again by the famed U.S.-Britain declaration of 1948, the territory of Trieste is not yet within Italy's reach; the U.S.-Britain declaration of Oct. 8 gives her a lien on Zone A--the port of Trieste and the northern section of the territory --but it is still to be put into effect.

Last week the unresolved Trieste problem flared up in bloody demonstrations. At the bottom of it was a widespread fear among Italians that the U.S. and Britain might renege' on their Zone A promise, as they had failed to deliver on their 1948 declaration that all Trieste should be Italy's. The Oct. 8 promises had not been carried out because of ugly threats made by Communist Dictator Tito of Yugoslavia, who already holds Zone B and who insistently trumpeted to the world that he would not see Zone A go to Italy without war.

After the Rites. The emotion-charged day on which violence began was the 34th anniversary of Italy's World War I victory over Austria. In Redipuglia--where 100,000 of Italy's war dead are buried--scores of thousands of people from all over Italy and from Zone A crowded into the cemetery amphitheater for the annual ceremony. Among the dignitaries on hand in Redipuglia, 20 miles northwest of Trieste, was Italy's Premier Giuseppe Pella. An open-air Mass was said, patriotic songs were sung, a Trieste orphan boy (grandson of a soldier buried at Redipuglia) read the last order of the day, which Italians call the victory bulletin of 1918.

After the rites, in the late afternoon, some 12,000 patriotic Trieste Italians poured back into the city. They sang, shouted slogans. Hundreds moved toward the Piazza dell'Unita, Trieste's central square, on which the city hall stands, and were joined by crowds of students. Trieste's special police were alerted, and arrived in jeeps. The marchers jeered them.

Trieste's special police, recruited from both Italians and Slavs of Zone A, are trained and commanded by the British; they are under the direct control of Britain's Major General Sir Thomas John Willoughby Winterton, Military Governor of Trieste (and also commander of the British and U.S. troops there). General Winterton's tough cops are not liked. Paid twice the salaries of Italian cops, they are also suspect by Triestini as contented Independentistas who want to keep the status quo.

It fell to the police to disperse the marchers. They began by trying to wrest an Italian flag from the column leaders, and in the scuffle they began swinging rifle butts and truncheons (see NEWS IN PICTURES). The Triestini counterattacked with a hail of paving stones. By midnight about 15 rioters had been hurt, scores arrested.

Violation of Sanctuary. Next day, there was another clash between police and demonstrators, mostly students (but including some neo-Fascist toughs). This time the police used fire hoses and tear gas. They chased some of the rioters into the famous old Church of San Antonio, and in a surprising violation of the traditional right of sanctuary, continued to swing their clubs inside.

The Bishop of Trieste ordered the church reconsecrated, and the ceremony that afternoon set off new violence. The police used firearms for the first time, apparently firing over the heads of the crowd, but one youth was killed.

All over the city, crowds began upsetting and burning British cars and police jeeps. They burst into the city hall and ran an Italian flag up to half-staff. On the third day they broke into Independentista headquarters, threw furniture, draperies and records out of the windows. When the rioters surged toward the Piazza dell'Unita again, the police tried to stop them with jeep and motorcycle charges. Then they fired their carbines into the crowd, and that cleared the square, except for the dead and wounded.

At the end of three days it was clear that under the rough police handling, the situation was likely to get worse instead of better. General Winterton ordered them off the streets, and put U.S. troops of the 351st Infantry Regiment to the job of restoring order. It was a belated but successful move. The Triestini cheered the Americans, and order was restored within a few hours, without any more casualties. But the toll of the three days' work stood thus: among the demonstrators, six dead, 56 wounded or injured, more than 100 arrested; for the police, no deaths, 72 wounded.

Attacking the British. All Italy was enraged. Violence sputtered in Rome, Milan, Genoa, Naples, Bari, Messina. In Rome, U.S. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, returning from a call on Premier Pella, found Via Veneto, the broad street in front of the embassy, blocked by demonstrators, so that her car could not get through. Unhesitatingly, she stepped out of the car into the midst of the demonstrators and walked coolly through the crowd to the embassy. Then she offered to talk to any qualified representative of the demonstrators, but the crowd dispersed without anyone taking up the offer.

It was not against the U.S. that Italian anger was aroused. In most cities, the mob attacks were directed against British consulates. All newspapers printed pictures of blood on the steps of Trieste's San Antonio Church and cried denunciations of the inept performance of General Winterton. There were demands for his recall. Pella demanded that those responsible for the police order to fire "be named and that they be prosecuted." In London, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told the House of Commons that "the police seem to have shown admirable discipline and restraint in the face of extreme provocation." and U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that the U.S. was standing behind General Winterton.

Beyond the responsibility for the riots and the deaths lay the West's continuing failure to make good on its promise to Italy. After attending with his Cabinet a High Requiem Mass for the Trieste victims, Premier Pella warned: "Time is working in nobody's favor in the question of Trieste . . . Time works neither for Italy nor for the Allies nor for the cause of that peace which we have so much at heart. The dead of Trieste have furnished the evident proof of this warning with their blood."

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