ltaly’s people shape their future

By WILLIAM
ROBERTSON

iD the spring of 1848 the work-

ers of Milan rose and for five
breathless days gained the city
its independence by their revolt.
Next April, a hundred years
later almost to the day, Italy’s
25 million electors will go to the
polls in the first general election
under the new republican con-
stitution. When they vote, they
will face the issues for which
their forebears struggled a hun-
dred years ago: “Work, peace
and freedom.”

Under the new constitution a
Chamber of Deputies (for a five-
year term) and a Senate (six
years) will be elected. There
will be two major contestants:
the Democratic-Christian Party,
headed by present Premier de
Gasperi; and the People’s Bloc,
led by Socialists and Commun-
ists.

In 1946 the People’s Bloc poll-
ed 200,000 more votes than the
Demo-Christians; but the latter
was far the biggest single party,
and was later able to form a
right-wing government through
the adherence of the Saragat
group, which split away from
the Socialist Party. This group,
though lacking mass following,
includes — until the elections —
nearly half the Socialists’ parlia-

mentary representatives.

It is important to appreciate
the numerical insignificance of
Saragat’s group. The Socialists,
with over 850 thousand members
—further agumented when the
left-Liberal “Action Party” fused
with them in October—is con-
siderably larger than it was be-
fore the split, while Saragat’s
“PSLI”
members. Rome is Saragat’s
stronghold, but at the Rome
municipal elections the /PSLI
gained only 24,000 votes against
the People’s Bloc’s 208,000 (of
which nearly half were Social-
ist).

Left-wing unity, reaffirmed by
overwhelming majorities at the
recent congresses of the Social-
ist and communist parties, has
the solid support of almost the
whole of the working class and
“the militant support of many
millions of landless agricultural
workers and peasants\” accord-
ing to the London Times. Out
of this support vast mass or-
ganizations have grown—organ-
izations which. will play an im-
portant, perhaps decisive, role in
the forthcoming elections.

When the United Confedera-
tion of Labor elected delegates
to its congress, 59 percent were
Communists, 23 percent Social-
ist and 13 Reecent Demo-Chris-.

can claim only 30,000:

» ness,

tian. Saragat’s supporters scrap-
ed a bare 4 percent. The or-
ganized workers overwhelmingly
support the program of the Peo-
ple’s Bloc. Their discipline and
determination has been shown

by recent almost invariably suc-
cessful strike action.

The partisans have seen the
De Gasperi regime throw over-
board everything for which they
have struggled, while Fascism
re-emerges with enraging bold-
The partisan movement
has done much to weld workers
with the peasants behind the
left-wing. The New Statesman,
reporting that “the smashing of
neo-Fascist newspapers and
party offices... has been car-
ried out by peasants as well as
workers,” adds: “Both are be-
ginning to understand that their
enemies are the same. This will
count for much.”

‘PRESS are nearly six million

landless peasants. Their or-
ganizations in Romagna and
Emilia were among the last to
submit to Mussolini's Fascist
“black squads.” Today the peas-
ants are again well organized
and miitant in their demands

‘for land reform—a major plank

in the platform of the left par-
ties, but strongly opposed by

Demo-Christians—after their
in 1946.

Among the poorer farmersand
the landless peasants of the
north, “Confederterra” is power-
ful. Under its Communist gen-
eral secretary, Illio _Bosio, it
waged an epic and successful

million-strong farmworkers’
strike in the Po valley last De-
cember, vastly adding to its
prestige.

the
election

Among the even poorer peas-
antry of Naples and the south,
another left-led organization is
acquiring vast influence. Found-
ed in December, the “Renais-
sance of the South” has gained
hundreds of thousands of sup-
porters, demanding land reform
and the break-up of the large
feudal Latifondi.

Throughout industry the trade
unions have sponsored “man-
agement councils’—joint  pro-
duction committees with exten-
sive powers and vast energy—
which have enabled Italian pro-
duction ‘to recover at an aston-
ishing rate. They are. deter-
mined that the results of their
efforts shall no longer be frit-
tered away on the all-pervading
black market, or go to line the
pockets of the rich.

The wartime partisan move-

ment set up liberation commit-
tees and other local government
organs. Allied troops and mili-

tary government stifled this
popular power. The Allied auth-
orities everywhere backed up
the remnants of the “old or-
der,” and conducted a viciously
anti-left campaign.

In Naples in 1944 I jnvesti-
gated a typical example. An
Italian-speaking soldier discov-
ered the “low-down” on an ex-
tensive local black-marketing
ring, tied up as usual with poli-
tics and headed by leading local
figures of the previous regime.
He reported his discoveries to
his commanding officer — and
was immediately posted to the
front line—the other end of
Italy.

After the war the U.S. be-
came the mainstay of the “
eriean Party,” as the De Gas-
peri regime is cynically styled.
Nevertheless the forces of the
liberation movement remain

‘strong and politically potent, as

the December march of parti-
sans through Rome spectacularly
evidenced. The month before, a
well-disciplined force of ex-par-
tisans took over control of Milan
(population 1,200,000) and ran it
peacefully and efficiently for over
twenty-four hours, until their
demands had been met.

Masaryk--victim of Marshall plan

By JOSEPH STAROBIN

TRANGE wreaths are being offered from this side
of the ocean for the grave of Jan Masaryk. Strange

eulogies are being made.

Amazing things are being said

and admitted at the edge of the grave which tell much

more about the living than they explain the dead.

“reign of terror’ did it, says
U.S. Secretary of State George
Marshall, and for once we
agree with him. Yes, the “reign
of terror” had a lot to do with
it, a terror which plunges en-
tire nations into fear, which
keeps America and Canada in
hysterical ignorance, which boy-
cotts whole peoples who insist
on determining their own way
of life.

_ The Marshall Planners — who
jeered at Masaryk only three
weeks ago, when they realized
that they could not use him,
are now singing his praises. —

But they do not admit that
it is their terror, manufactured
and generated from here, which
‘Masaryk was not strong enough
to endure and defeat.

If Canadians find it hard to
understand Jan Masaryk, let
them remember not only how
Roosevelt was hounded, but how
Henry Wallace is abused and
his supporters terrorized in a
walks of life.

Let them remember another
suicide—of John Gilbert Winant,
a former colleague of Roose-
velt's, who found that postwar
America was not what he hop-
ed and expected it to be, and
could not endure the strain of
it. :

At the United Nations, Mas-
aryk nervously called for an end
to that “cold and calculating’
policy which Secretary Marshall
still presses forward despite his
own admissions that the country
“has been thrown into hysteria
by this very policy.

Masaryk asked for aid to his
country on the basis of letting
the peoples of Czechoslovakia
determine their own affairs.

Who headed those appeals for
reason? Who answered Masaryk
with friendship? Who, until

three weeks ago called his coun- ©

_ try a police state, and then dis-

yo + irae ra
ties Canes wen

The

covered it to be a police state all
over again?

The same men who now offer
us the debasing spectacle of
eulogies, and who even attempt
to ‘use their victim for a con-
tinuation of the policies he coulde
not withstand.

PARE the case of the two
Czech diplomats, Slavik and

Papanek, who deserted their
country although Masaryk re-
fused to desert it. What are
they saying? According to them,
Masaryk’s only role was to be
a fifth-columnist inside of Czech-
oslovakia. This man who they
did not respect while he was
alive, they now pretend to mourn

But in so doing they reveal
the intrigues responsible for the
mid-February crisis in Czecho
slovakia; they reveal their own
role in those intrigues.

Are they sorry that Masaryk is
gone? Or are they only sorry
that he declined to play their
game? They are only exploiting
his death,

A man who was for most of
his life aloof and separated from
the common people, who knew
and enjoyed all the vices of the
world — and who nevertheless
tried his best to sustain himself
by cooperation with the new
world this is arising—this Mas-
aryk was” reviled by his own
kind, He was treated as a play-
boy. And when he could not
master the dilemma any longer,
he took his own life.

He refused to go back, where -
the ugly and contemptible fate
of the Mikolajezks awaited him.
Neither could he yo forward to
socialism, which is the salvation |
of the humanist tradition.

If we cannot agree with this,
we can respect it.

And we hurl back at the gar-
rulous cowards their attempt to
claim Masaryk, and to alibi their
own weakness by complaining
of communism’s strength.

‘Czechs mourn Masaryk

Thousands of people lined the streets of Prague, weeping, as the coffin bearing the body of
‘ Jan Masaryk, Czech foreign minister, passed by. Suicide of the man who had followed in his
father’s path as a fighter for Czechoslovakia, was seized upon by the Canadian and American
press to attack the things for which Masaryk had stood.

Franco documents suppressed

WASHINGTON.

"THE U.S. state department pos-

sesses 8,000 documents on the
role played by Franco Spain in
the Second World War which
were collected by the U.S. Army
and Naval intelligence. Now it
has been decided that these docu-
ments—which would have heavily
incriminated Fascist Spain had
they been handed to the UN at
the time Spain was discussed—
will not be published.

Top Washington policy-makers
feel that, read in context with
America’s “new policy” towards
Spain, those documents could
have a most undesirable effect on
public opinion in the U.S. It is
also pointed out in Washington

that publication of the documents:

would handicap the Democratic
Party in the forthcoming presi-
dential elections because it is

and

Democrat Harry Truman whose

government is working for the
rehabilitation of Spain.

Therefore it was decided that
the Spanish documents should be
“forgotten” by the state depart-
ment, just as the Rogge report
on co-operation between U.S. in-
dustrialists, politicians and con-
gressmen and Nazi Germany was
“forgotten” by the department of
justice.

Th documents deal with these
facts:

German scientists developed
and tested V-bombs in Spain with
the knowledge and co-operation
of Franco. Cartels like I, G. Far-
ben, . operating under’ various
names, are now sharing the con-
trol of Spanish industry. Hun-
dreds of German scientists are
working in Spanish laboratories
“the

owns and controls the results of
their research.

Throughout the war, the Span-
ish merchant navy served,as the
eyes and ears of German sub-
marines operating in the Carib-
bean and South Atlantic and
Spanish naval vessels smuggled
Gestapo agents into the western
hemisphere, The Spanish island
of Minorca was léased to the Ger-
man Air Force as an air base.

Throughout the war, Spanish
diplomats acted as liaison offi
cers between Nazi and Italian
politicians and their friends in
the Argentine, Bolvia and Brazil.
The Spanish diplomatic service
willingly carried out espionage
tasks in the western hemisphere
for Nazi Germany. Now at least
40,000 Nazis hold Spanish pass-
ports and can_ travel—for in-

Spanish governmentstance, to the United States.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 2%, 1948—PAGE 6

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