(2 of 8)
Over the few brief years of democracy his coalition government has wobbled and slimmed away under the pressures from the totalitarian extremes and the attrition of responsibility.
Over the Chasm. It is not at all certain that the 26 million Italians who vote next fortnight will give Alcide de Gasperi a chance to continue his job. Since 1948 the De Gasperi alliance has held 63% of the seats in Italy's lower house. But in municipal and other contests since, it has showed considerable losses of strength.
Last week the magazine. II Tempo forecast that the coming election will be very close: about 13,500,000 votes for the Christian Democratic coalition, and 12,500,000 for the totalitarian extremes.
De Gasperi's coalition needs better than 50% of the vote to win enough parliamentary seats to govern Italy effectively. The betting is that he will narrowly make it.
Alcide de Gasperi has been in tight spots before. For a good part of his life he was, by hobby, a mountain climber. Once, many years ago, he slipped from a ledge in the Dolomites and twirled for 20 minutes at the end of a rope before he pulled himself to safety.
De Gasperi has crossed a lot of political chasms since then. Somehow, with undramatic surefootedness. he has always got past danger—often with results that have been far more spectacular than the events themselves made them seem.
For seven years Premier de Gasperi has been playing the deadly game of cold-war politics with an unspectacular competence that obscures both the man and his achievements. Italians (according to the popular U.S. stereotype) are enthusiastic and impulsive; De Gasperi is withdrawn, often icily aloof. The language of Dante is a melting, musical tongue, and Italians traditionally make colorful orators, but De Gasperi is a rambling, unmusical speaker who can stretch a few scribbled notes into a 90-minute discourse. Italians are accustomed to the spectacular in politics —Garibaldi and his red-shirted 1,000; the Blackshirts marching on Rome; Palmiro Togliatti's Reds tearing up piazzas. Alcide de Gasperi disdains the theatrical and the violent, speaks softly, listens forbearingly, sits out crises patiently, and acts unhurriedly with an extraordinary instinct for timing.
Italy gave the world Pagliacci, the story of a man who laughs even in the face of tragedy. But the sharp, austere features of De Gasperi (cartoonists like to depict him as a wise, great-beaked black crow with lively eyes behind huge spectacles) remain glum even in moments of pleasure, and only his intense eyes glow. He has no notable administrative talent, and economists have been heard to mutter that he sometimes seems to be "an economic illiterate." He wears his imperfections humbly, like a suit of well-worn clothing, as if to suggest that attempting to discard them would be indecent.