All day and most of the night, the Christian Democratic Party Congress tried to decide for or against continuation of Italy's 85-year-old monarchy. Finally, at 3 a.m., the puffy-eyed delegates of Italy's strongest party voted 3-to-1 against. Though heavily Catholic, they thus defied the present royalist policy of the Vatican (which had itself once opposed the scions of Savoy when their drive for Italy's political unification jeopardized Papal power).
With the Socialists and Communists already on record for a republic, the Savoyards had little chance of saving their throne in the plebiscite next June. Italians had always snickered at little (5...
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