ITALY: Close Decision

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Democracy's Forces. Disappointed, 72-year-old Alcide de Gasperi announced that he would make the most of his slim victory, and hoped to avoid French-style cabinet crises. Back in 1947, he had governed for a year with a minority; it is constitutionally harder to bring down a government in Italy than in France. Nonetheless, he would need outside help to govern. De Gasperi's moderate Socialist allies urged him to flirt with the Nenni Red Socialists, but De Gasperi is not the man to forget that Pietro Nenni was the only non-Communist allowed to stand guard at the bier of Joseph Stalin. On the right, Lauro's Monarchists hoped to be invited to join a new De Gasperi cabinet, but for them the Premier saved his angrier words: "Those irresponsible gentlemen who, in wanting to save monarchy, did not hesitate to endanger the country ... the ruling classes of southern Italy, heirs to centuries-old tradition of neglect and sloth ... are responsible for the fact that 70 more leftists will be seated in the new Parliament."

In the next few years, democracy will be sitting on a knife-edge in Italy. In parliamentary pinches, De Gasperi will have to count on grudging votes of individual Monarchists to carry him through.