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Crisis in Italy. In Italy the Government of Premier Ivanoe Bonomi faced a crisis almost as acute as that threatening Premier Pierlot. In Rome, the Socialists and Communists (whose Naples membership had bounded from 2,000 to 60,000 in a year) staged a huge public rally. Up the Palatine Hill trudged thousands of men & women, carrying big pictures of Stalin and Lenin and Hammer-&-Sickle flags. Soon the Domitian Stadium (some 175 yds. long by 52 wide) was jammed with 25,000 red-shirted demonstrators. Most of them were middleclass.
Socialist Boss Pietro Nenni and Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti spoke. Nenni lashed out against the monarchy as the greatest supporter of Fascism, called on the Italian people to take up arms against the dangerous spirit of reaction it represented. There was a blizzard of paper scraps on each of which was written "Abasso la borghesia!" (Down with the bourgeoisie!).
Palmiro Togliatti had listened with a thin smile flickering across his face. As Nenni finished, Togliatti threw his arms around him and they clinched in a cheek-kissing embrace.
Then Togliatti spoke. He said: "We will never allow Italy and the Soviet proletariat to see between them a barrier such as reactionary groups have vainly attempted to construct. . . . Our Soviet comrades await from us proof of our good faith, and we must conduct with the greatest energy the fight against the Fascist bureaucracy in our ministries. . . ." The Cabinet crisis continued.
Crisis in Greece. Last week Athens, where the Government of moderate Premier Papandreou kept order with the help of British forces, was an island in a country wrecked by famine, disease, inflation and ruled by the leftist EAM.
New York Timesman A. C. Sedgwick reported: "While the Greek Government holds sway in Athens and its environs, the remainder of the country except Epirus ... is virtually a Communist province.
"The ELAS [military arm of the leftist EAM] has arms. Not only have its soldiers generally failed to turn them in, even in the Athens area, but there are indications that the ELAS has not encouraged the disarming requested by the Government. The Communist Party is opposed to calling up classes for the national army and continues to encourage its own force to increase its strength and augment stores of arms in clandestine arsenals.
"Crowds of young people, singing EAM songs that urge the establishment of a 'people's Government' and a repudiation of the monarchy, painted party slogans on walls and processions of youths shouting castigations of 'Fascists' are the prevailing features of these days of tension here."
In Moscow Pravda attacked the efforts of the French and Belgian Governments to disarm the Resistance groups: "Europe is winning release from a nightmare. Is it not obvious that the most important question facing the liberated country is complete elimination of any remnants of Fascist influence?"