Exit Piccioni
The failure of Signor Piccioni to form an Italian govern- ment was the failure to span an ocean by a suspension bridge. Piccioni himself is a right-wing Christian Democrat and he was trying to form a government of the Centre. But he depended on support from the small Social Democrat party: and the Social Democrats are fickle. Signor Saragat, their leader, has insisted that any government his party supports must lure Nenni's Socialists away from the Communists with whom they have been associated for the last seven years. Saragat is convinced that Nenni will divorce himself from the Communists if given a profitable chance. If he did, he would greatly reduce the Communist danger in Italy: But any Centre government which was trying to walk hand in hand with Signor Nenni would sooner or later have been forced to abandon either its principles or its parliamentary majority. For Signor Piccioni, it was sooner rather than later. The Saragat Socialists refused to accept his Cabinet, because it included the ex-Prime Minister, Signor de Gasperi, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and because the continuation of de Gasperi's pro-American foreign policy would be too unpalatable for any, associates of the Italian Communist Party. Thus it would seem that any other Christian Democrat who attempts to form a government with a stable parliamentary majority will be faced with the alternatives of weakening Italy's position in the Atlantic alliance or of abandoning the idea of support from the left.
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