On April 18 Paul Revere's ride and the San Francisco earthquake began. For another reason, April 18 kept bobbing up last week in dispatches from Paris, London, Washington. On that day Italy would hold a general election which one Washington official called more important to the U.S. than its own presidential election next November.
Two months ago, official U.S. observers had been confident that the combination of Communists and left-wing Socialists would be beaten. Last week they were far less confident. The sentiments of the Italian voters had not changed much; but the U.S. observers had found out more about those sentiments.
Recent by-elections indicated that the Red Popular front might win; almost certainly the election would be close.
Last week in Italy, both sides were concentrating on door-to-door campaigning. The Christian Democratic party, believing that a fourth of anti-Communists failed to vote in the last election, had a slogan: "He who doesn't vote gives his ballot to Italy's enemies."
The Communists said little about Communism, less about Russia. With help from an unexpected quarter, they stirred Up anticlericalism in answer to the Church's anti-Communist campaign. But above all, the Communists talked about the high cost of living. In Rome's working class street, Via Gesú e Maria, a Communist tailor kept his shop open late at night. "The government was pledged to combat inflation," he told neighbors, "yet artichokes cost 70 lire each—artichokes alia Romano, have become artichokes alia signorile [of the rich]."
If enough Italians were impressed by these arguments, a belated alarm would ring through the Western world. A Communist-dominated Italy would be far more dangerous than a Communist Czechoslovakia or than the Red threat to Greece and Turkey against which President Truman had issued a dramatic warning a year ago.
April 18 was, in fact, the brink of catastrophe.