ITALY: Our Future Is Temporary

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Every Aug. 15, when Ferragosto rolls around, all Italy takes a holiday. For 24 hours newspapers go unpublished, garbage uncollected, milk undelivered; banks, offices, shops and restaurants shut. Nothing earnest happens on the 2,000-year-old holiday, not even official business; it is Italy's seventh-inning stretch.

Last week, when Ferragosto rolled around, there was unwonted activity in one household: President Luigi Einaudi's summer villa at Caprarola, 40 miles from Rome. For 48 days Italy had been without a government; passage of the budget was long overdue. That afternoon, frail, 79-year-old President Einaudi closeted himself with Giuseppe Pella, Italy's able finance minister for the past six years and dogged protector of the lira. Emerging three hours later, Pella announced that as Premier-designate, he would try to form a government.

Down Go I & 2. He was the third to try since the inconclusive election of June 7, in which the center declined, and the left and right gained. First had been Alcide de Gasperi, hoping to restore the coalition of the center, over which he presided for six years. He failed, and took to the hills to rest and reread Virgil.

Then came another Christian Democrat, Attilio Piccioni, De Gasperi's Deputy Premier. The problem before him was whether to win over the Monarchists. with 40 votes, or the left-center (Social Democrats, Liberals, Republicans), with 38 votes. Piccioni decided to try the left flank, and was running along nicely until he collided with Social Democrat Giuseppe Saragat. Six years ago, Saragat. flamingly pro-Western ("Neutralism is impossible in Italy"), led his followers out of the Socialist Party, crying that Leader Pietro Nenni was a "filocomunista." But after the recent election, in which he lost 14 seats while Fellow Traveler Nenni gained 23, Saragat began seeing his old enemy Nenni for friendly chats.

Now Saragat would join Piccioni's Cabinet only if it really moved to the left. "All right," said Piccioni. "It's O.K. about the program," Saragat next told friends, "but the men who are to carry it out are important. Out with the names, damn it!" When the names came out, Saragat would not play: "You can't name men of rightist opinions to administer a program of leftist social progress." And so Piccioni gave up.

Up Comes Three. Pella, who is also a Christian Democrat, announced a modest program. He would sidestep politics and name a Cabinet of "technicians" to serve for a "transition period," i.e., get the regular budget through Parliament by the end of October as required by the constitution. Nine of Pella's 15 "technicians" turned out to be ministers in previous De Gasperi Cabinets, and all were Christian Democrats. Pella would be his own foreign minister and budget minister. Said he: "Our future is temporary."

This week Pella will ask a vote of confidence and find out how temporary his future is. Even if he wins a brief turn in office, there is little likelihood of restoring political stability in Italy without a new national election, possibly next April.