ITALY: Reprieve

Just before leaving for a good-will visit to the U.S., Italy's careful little Premier, Mario Scelba, faced trouble inside his precarious four-party coalition government. Two small groups in the coalition were quarreling, and the Christian Democrats' own ambitious and powerful secretary-general, Amintore Fanfani, was demanding an immediate showdown (TIME, March 21).

Mario Scelba is slow to anger and never reaches heights of flaming oratory. He is the kind of man who writes out all his political pronouncements, follows his script closely and cannot be heckled into indiscretions. Last week, aware of his troubles, modest Mario Scelba, in a speech...

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