The Gisborne Herald. IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED “THE TIMES." GISBORNE, THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1948. HISTORIC POLITICAL TEST IN ITALY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22618, 22 April 1948, Page 4

The Gisborne Herald. IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED “THE TIMES." GISBORNE, THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1948. HISTORIC POLITICAL TEST IN ITALY

JTOR some weeks before the polling it was widely expected that the Italian general elections would provide a hard and closelycontested struggle between the forces of democracy and totalitarianism. Alone of the western European Socialist parties, the Italian Socialists—with the exception of a breakaway group supporting the Government —had agreed to merge their electoral identities with the Communists. This move constituted a formidable challenge. When the Assembly was elected in 1946 Signor de Oaspcri’s Christian Democrats received 8,083.000 votes, while the Communists and Socialists between them polled 9,086,000. The balance of power rested with a number of minor parties, ranging from Monarchists to moderate Socialists, who altogether received 5,780,000 votes; it was these parties which kept de Gasperi in office. The situation now is quite different. This morning’s news includes the information that the Christian Democrats, going from success to success, have won an absolute majority in both Houses. On the eve of the election it was apparent that the earlier feeling of misgiving was being dissipated. There was growing confidence in the good sense of the Italian people and their ability to record a responsible vote which would mean the clear-cut rejection of communism and a decision to work their political passage towards rehabilitation along democratic lines. They certainly had every encouragement to do so. Because the stakes were so high, the Western Allies took every legitimate means of influencing Italian opinion. They gave Italy most sympathetic treatment over Avar reparations and in dollar advances for reconstruction. They declared in favour of returning to her the Trieste territory, thereby getting in first with an offer which Yugoslavia and Russia may have intended to make as a last-minute hid for a Communist vote. Furthermore, the people had before them the ruthless example of Communist, methods in Czechoslovakia and tinstrong appeal which the Church had made fora vote to ensure ‘‘the law of Cod and freedom of religion.” Finally, they must have realised that, by tradition and cultural tics, their affinity was with the West. The decision is of world-wide importance. In the “cold war” strategy of the Soviet Union a Communist Italy would have extended the iron curtain across the Mediterranean and made it extremely difficult for the Western Powers to support Greece and Turkey in their resistance to Russian influence. And it would have withdrawn one more industrialised nation from the group whose resources are to he pooled under the Marshall Plan i'or European recovery. The position is particularly satisfactory because the strong working majority given the Christian Democrats will eliminate the risk of a series of splits and stalemates which might have played into the hands of the Communist-Socialist opposition. Whatever reaction the Communists might choose to stage is hound to he unpopular in the eyes of the great majority of the Italian people.