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In the coalition cabinet with the Communists, De Gasperi proved his depressing but important talent for compromise and parliamentary maneuver. After a year and a half of patchwork bargains with the Communists, who were clearly out to paralyze the government and wreck Italy's economy, De Gasperi again had his back to the window. But this time he did not jump. With U.S. help, he stood his ground. This time it was the Communists who were defenestrated—right out of his cabinet. The great compromiser had become one of Italy's most stubborn fighters.
The Man. Some of his unsuspected strength, it might be, came from mountain climbing. This perilous passion teaches its devotees many things: the smallness and insignificance of man; how to endure immense silence and loneliness. Above all, it teaches the art of hanging on. Once, De Gasperi slipped and hung for hours by a rope over a precipice. When one of his rescuers remarked that it must have been the worst experience of De Gasperi's life, he said: "Nonsense. It was not half so bad as life normally is under Fascism."
De Gasperi is a humble man. He lives in a simple apartment (the furniture is the same which he had bought, on the installment plan, when he was Vatican librarian). He sleeps in a small hard bed in a tiny whitewashed room, decorated only by a crucifix and a picture of a Madonna. The first thing he did when he became Premier was to get a salary advance and buy a good blue suit. He is economical and (like France's Premier Schuman) has a passion for turning off unnecessary electric lights. His wife Francesca is a plain, pleasant woman who bore him four daughters; one married a Milan butcher, another became a nun.
De Gasperi has achieved at least one thing notable in present-day Europe: he has governed his country without the "help" of the Communists. No brilliant organizer, he has a great admiration for experts; he has surrounded himself with able men. Chief among them:
¶ Giuseppe Saragat, the leader of Italy's anti-Red Socialists; he is one of De Gasperi's Vice Premiers.
¶ Marco Scelba, Minister of the Interior and energetic head of Italy's police. A policeman through & through, he trusts no one, even drives his own car to work.
¶ Randolfo Pacciardi, leader of the Republicans, an almost legendary figure in Italy, who organized a youth movement against Mussolini, was hounded out of the country, brilliantly led the Garibaldi Brigade in Spain. In De Gasperi's government he is a Vice Premier in charge of public order. It is his special job to take care of the Reds if they start trouble on election day, or after.