On the night after the election, until the small hours of the morning, Rome's people crowded around the column of Marcus Aurelius in the Piazza Colonna. laughing and slapping each other's backs. "Let's go home!" cried one woman. "The danger is over." While Romans celebrated democracy's victory, swarms of the city's ragged children roamed the streets, tearing down election posters in order to sell them as scrap for a few lire. It was a sharp reminder that the danger was far from over. The victors still had a price to pay for their 18 million anti-Communist votes. The price was land and bread for Italy's workers and peasants.
The Score. The Christian Democrats' landslide was bigger than anything they had expected.
¶ Christian Democrats: 12,700,000 (48.7% of the popular vote). Chamber of Deputies: 307 out of 575 seats. Senate: 151 out of 350 seats.
¶ Popular Front: 8,000,000 (30.7%). Chamber: 182 seats. Senate: 115.
¶ Anti-Communist (Saragat) Socialists: 1,800,000 (7.1%). Chamber: 33 seats. Senate: 25.
¶ Other anti-Communist Parties: 3,600,000 (13.5%). Chamber: 52 seats. Senate: 59*
Saddest cases were the left-wing Socialists, who under Pietro Nenni had joined the Communists on the single Popular Front ticket. Said tough former Socialist Minister Giuseppe Romita, urging a break with Nenni: "The Popular Front absorbed and nullified our party."
No Waterloo. At first the Communists seemed stunned by their defeat. The victors gleefully taunted them with banners: "Togliatti—do you understand? Go back to Russia!" Rome chuckled over the story of the two Communist election judges at Ischia: when the returns were counted, only one Communist vote had been cast. Each judge called the other a traitor; both wound up in the hospital.
Communist Labor Boss Giuseppe di Vittorio publicly admitted his distress that Italian Reds had been obliged to attack the Marshall Plan. He said he would ask the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions to let workers in each country decide for themselves what stand to take on U.S. aid. "When someone wants to help you," he said, "it is ridiculous to slap him in the face."
But soon a message went out from Communist headquarters to "stop moping." Palmiro Togliatti gave out the official excuse for the defeat: the elections had not been free—the U.S. and the Vatican had interfered. Said Luigi Longo, who commands the Red partisans: "The election was not a Waterloo, but just a lost battle . . . The relations between the government and the people will go through dangerous tensions . . . We will collect the fruits of our labors at some future date . . ."
Fear still flickered through Italy on the morning after the election. Bologna, the Red capital, seemed like a dead city, its medieval porticos empty, its gleaming pastry shops deserted. In Milan's Cathedral Square, 25,000 Communist partisans staged a demonstration (despite a government ban) ; they were dispersed by police, who fired machine guns into the air, and by a timely rainstorm. One policeman was killed. But beaming Minister of the Interior Mario Scelba was sure that his security forces could maintain order.