(6 of 7)
The other day, a roughly dressed peasant shambled into Rossetti's law office. He wanted advice but he had no money. With a benevolent smile the lawyer gave him advice, then said: "What if there had been a Communist regime and I hadn't been here to advise you because I was somewhere in Siberia?"
The peasant was defiant. "I don't see why one shouldn't try something new." Said Rossetti: "Certainly. Vote for Saragat. He's new and he's safe. He's a true Socialist—not like Nenni."
Back in his village the peasant might forget about Saragat or the lawyer—were it not for the village committee workers who run from house to house, the women who inveigle themselves into conversations with busy housewives, the peasant volunteers who talk to workers "in the fields. Catholic Action was the first political force that knew how to best the Communists at their own game of zealously serving the people's simple, urgent needs.
Another Chance? As the fateful day approached, politicians were frantically trying to remember whether they had forgotten anything. The last new posters appeared (the Christian Democrats had one showing a skull with a red star on its forehead). In the last-minute game of favors, the U.S. maneuvered Russia into vetoing (for the third time) a U.S. proposal that Italy be admitted to the U.N. In Florence, Communist stooges staged public debates in a final attempt to change a few minds here & there. One of them was asked if he would vote for the Reds himself. Said he, mellowed by a glass of Tuscan wine: "Ma che! [not at all] Can't see into the voting booth."
No one, indeed, could see into the voting booths, but by week's end it seemed highly unlikely that the Communists would get a majority. When the new Parliament meets May 8, it will elect a President of the Republic, who will in turn nominate a Premier, who must obtain a confidence vote from Parliament. Without a majority in both houses, the Red deputies would be unable to block formation of a non-Communist government. But unless the Communists' defeat was overwhelming (which seemed also unlikely), they would probably make a grab for power. They could do two things:
1) Provoke violence and civil war (on the Greek pattern) between April 18 and May 8.
2) Permit a non-Communist government (i.e., De Gasperi) to take over, and then try to wreck it through strikes and sabotage.
Togliatti last week appealed to the people to accept any election result with "orderly serenity." But when De Gasperi, speaking at Pescara, predicted a Christian Democrat victory and scoffed at the possibility of a coup d'état ("this is not a Balkan country, governments here are not improvised"), Togliatti fumed. "How can he be sure? He cannot be sure unless as head of the government he is actually preparing some big election intrigue." That charge might easily serve later to "justify" a Red coup.