TRIESTE: Blood in the Streets

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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'Unitá, 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.