Ambassador to 'Italy
By JENNY NICHOLSON Rome UNTIL the-appointment of Sir Ashley Clarke as the new British Ambassador to Rome, no high-ranking Briton has expressed the fund of friendliness towards Italy which undoubtedly exists in England, whereas there has been frequent expression—not formally, but casually and incident- ally—of the even larger fund of contempt, distrust and boredom with the shrillness of Latin nationalism. ,, Sir Ashley's first simple and imaginative gesture was to call a conference of Italian journalists and announce his pleasure at being translated to Italy. On arrival at Rome airport he addressed the Press in fluent Italian. Although he looked such a theatrical version of the old-school English diplomat—tall, fair-moustached, distinguished, with a red carnation in his perfectly tailored overcoat—that an Italian journalist remarked : ' What! no monocle?" his approach belonged to November, 1953. He made no old-fashioned references to the beauties of Italy and Anglo-Italian cultural ties. He sensibly reminded everyone that we were modern allies, assured them that " Trieste is vividly in our minds," and was the first British official to " profoundly regret the loss of lives."
The hyper-sensitive Italians have grudgingly taken this as an indication that an eminent Englishman has come to work in Rome with the attitude that Italy is worth bothering about. Italians are always terrified at the prospect of not being taken seriously. And the Right and Left have made incessant pro- paganda out of the feeling that Italy's post-war problems and achievements have not been taken seriously by the British. Sir Ashley is faced with the task of improving Anglo-Italian rela- tions at a time when the two countries comprehend each other very little.
Wherever two or three neo-Fascist officials are gathered together, anti-British feeling is fostered. The liberal writer, Arrigo Benedetti, pointed out in last week's Europeo: "Let us be truthful. After the war it would have been easy to normalise Anglo-Italian relations, and this normalisation would have benefited us—particularly in solving the Trieste problem. Instead, we have sought to postpone it; for purely electoral reasons, the political parties have made use of the facile anti- British theme inherited from Fascism and the reason for its ruin; or, at best, they have arranged to avoid a salutary clarification between ourselves and Britain. Fascism has not only left us the hard inheritance of the problem of our eastern frontiers, it has also left us the best way not to solve the problem."
Sir Ashley probably will not stand much chance of making the political parties and the Foreign Office give up this facile theme. Anti-British feeling is so deeply rooted in most official quarters that it would scream like a mandrake if he tried to weed it out. But he can operate, as none of his predecessors in the last eight years has done, in the crucial circles of culti- vated Italians nurtured on British liberalism. And by identi- fying Britain with Italy's problems and achievements with well- timed gestures he may win the goodwill of the Italian in the street and field whose hostility is not calculated. For example, a spontaneous radio message of sympathy for the continuing flood disaster in Calabria would be appreciated by the Italian public. A personal appearance at the scenes of this biblical- scale catastrophe would be publicised in the newspapers of both countries.
Hitherto, well-trained British diplomats have always been able to grasp and react to back-stage political scuffles, but have not shown any interest in the necessity for public gestures.
In eight years of hard work, British diplomats in Rome have won no public credit here for the benefits they have gained for Italy. No one here is told of the battles they have fought for Italian tomatoes, Italian jam, Italian miners, Italian ships (wanted by Russia), and even for Italian colonies. Equally, the British Press has given Italy little credit for the goodwill she has demonstrated towards all the democratic projects we support. She has proved the best behaved partner in the Atlantic Pact with ten completed divisions. She quickly ratified the coal and steel pool and showed a readiness to accept the European Defence Community. She has liberalised her trade 95 per cent. and has a credit balance in the European Payments Union. But the Centre Government, depending largely on a party of Catholic labour leaders, southern land barons, northern industrialists, intellectual progressives and complacent Papal nobility who have nothing in common but their religion, is precariously balanced. The slightest tremor could upset it—as Trieste has been threatening to upset it for the past two months. Sir Ashley is faced with this maddeningly unreal problem. To tackle it with commonsense—that British commodity which other peoples often regard as devilish subtlety—is not only useless but dangerous. The Prime Minister, Signor Pella, caught the imagination of the nation with the phrase : " Trieste is the touchstone of the Atlantic Alliance." It will be the touchstone of Sir Ashley's ability to smile and comprehend when the problem of this city and its dismal hinterland is ruthlessly exploited for obscure domestic ends.
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