Badoglio Reconstructs
Marshal Badoglio has formed a new Italian Cabinet m which certain persons in his former Ministry objectionable to the Allies are not included. It is to be regarded as an interim Government composed of persons immediately available, whose function it is to bring the executive Ministries into working order so that the day- to-day work of government may be carried on. The necessity of restoring the machinery of administration as soon as possible has been pressed upon him by the head of the Allied Mission. The• Marshal has announced that he himself will relinquish his position as head of the Government as soon as the Allies reach Rome. On one point he takes a firm stand—that major constitutional decisions should not be taken until the liberation of Italy has been completed and the Italian people as a whole can openly decide on the form of government. For this reason, though he would like to have had Count Sforza and the philosopher Benedetto Croce in his Cabinet, he is unable to accept their conditions—namely, that the King should be required to abdicate, the Crown Prince to renounce the succession, and that the Crown Prince's son should be made ' King with a Regent to act during his minority. The Marshal is on unchallengeable ground when he says that in a matter of this importance the decision is one which should be left to the Italian people as a whole. The Allies are profoundly interested in the abolition of Fascism and the establishment of a Government in accordance with the real desires of the people ; but precisely because their views and their policy are democratic, it is not for them to support this or that coostitutional procedure over the heads of the Italian people. It would be wrong and foolish on our part to attempt to shape internal policy in every country conquered or liberated by the Allies.
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