Evening star., 1953-06-06
Test in Italy

Nobody is going out on limb in predicting
the outcome, but all who realize the vital I'm
portance of a stable, pro-Western national gov
ernment in Rome are hoping and praying that
Premier de Gasperi and his coalition win a
decisive victory in 1taly's impending parlia-
mentary elections.
To win such a victory the Premier and his
alliance of middle-of- -the-road parties-Repub-
licans, Liberals, Social Democrats and his own
Christian Democratic followers need to get
combined total Of only fraction more than
so per cent of the overall popular vote. If they
achieve that, then they will receive, in keeping
with Italy's new electoral law, bonus giving
them IS per cent Of the seats in Parliament-a
strength insuring their ability to form durable
and effective government.
BY all reasonable standards, because Of his
record of accomplishments, De Gasperi should
be rewarded with that kind of outcome. For
Italy, under his Christian Democratic and
coalition administration, has staged remark
able postwar recovery in which raging infla-
tion has been conquered and the Ira stabilized
into one of the soundest of European currencies.
Indeed, in the opinion of most experts, the
country is economically better of today than
at any time in modern history.
However, despite this, the fact remains that
Italy is an overpopulated land, poor both in
food resources and in the raw materials
required for thriving industrial economy.
Although its present living standards are better
than in a long, long time, nature has not
endowed it with what it needs to support all
its people, and emigration outlets are now too
limited to make the country's basic problem
more manageable. The result is, according to
expert estimates, that million Italians are
wholly unemployed and another million have
Of hnct oo1U roxyinU irno he
These figures, which are increasing as Italy's
population of At million continues to grow, speak
for themselves as measure of discomfort and
potential political trouble. They are meat for
the Communists and the fellow-traveling ex-
treme left-wing Socialists combination still
so threatfully strong that 1t may conceivably
take many crucial votes away from the De
GaSperi coalition. The coalition, moreover, is
menaced from the extreme right, which is made
up chiefly of the MonarchistS and followers of
the neo-fascist italian Social Movement. In
the opinion of some observers, these rightists
may even excel the Reds in scoring gains at the
expense of the middle of -the-road alliance.
In such circumstances, it is easy to under
stand why political reporters in Italy are loath
to bet money on the outcome of the elections
the first of their kind since 1948. Although
there is a general feeling that Premier de
Gasperi and his alliance will win more than
majority of the popular vote, no expert seems
inclined to pooh-pooh the possibility that both
the extreme right and the extreme left may
gain enough to make the formation of sound
government extremely dificult-a situation
that could be very serious not merely for the
Italians but for the West as q whole.
Certainly, considering Italys strategic sig
nificance as a member of the Atlantic alliance
and such enterprises as the Schuman Plan
and the six-nation European Defense Com
munity, there is every reason to be anxious
about the results of this test If De Gasperi
loses it, if the extremists win sufficient strength
to play a paralyzing role in Parliament, the
consequences could have an evil impact on
the entire free world.