Rome's humorous weekly Cantachiaro (Chanticleer) has crowed impudently ever since liberation. It has no political ties, boasts that it is an "anti" periodical. Under youthful, clever Editor Franco Monicelli, it has flung satiric articles and slapstick cartoons at whomever and whatever it pleases, not stopping at the Italian Government and the Anglo-American masters.
Fortnight ago Cantachiaro dug its spurs into a Benito Mussolini speech, delivered in Milan. Headlines and acetous comments derided the ex-Duce as "delirious ... a Nero who fiddled all Italy into ashes," and his followers as "scum in an advanced state of decay." Explained Editor Monicelli: "We offer the complete text [of Mussolini's speech] to our readers with the wish that . . . the last remains of this tragic buffoonery . . . should be swept away."
Next day the Communist Unità gave out a screech that smothered Cantachiaro's crow: "A weekly paper which calls itself satiric and anti-Fascist printed yesterday the complete text of Mussolini's speech, thus offering readers a most beautiful piece of Fascist propaganda. . . . This is an act of evident collaboration ... an act of sabotage. . . . The paper which does it must be suppressed and the responsible person arrested."
Out to the news kiosks stomped Communist strong-arm squads. They picked up all copies of Cantachiaro, paid for them with I.O.U.s. The Government's National Press Commission went into an emergency huddle, weighed its first case involving freedom of the press under Allied rule. Its decision: a reprimand for Editor Monicelli, one week's suspension for Cantachiaro.