SALVEMINI SAYS ITALIAN PEOPLE DESIRE REPUBLIC

"The majority of the Italian people want neither a king nor a royalty," asserted Gaetano Salvemini, Lauro de Bosis Lecturer on Italian History, in a discussion yesterday on the problems of post-war Italy, "and it is only a union of the businessmen, the remnants of the army, and the British and American forces of occupation that uphold the present regime.

"The tragedy of the situation," he added, "is that Communist Russia is also backing up the monarchical government because of an agreement with England. The Italian people are being made to suffer because of what is happening in Poland."

British Influence

This agreement, Salvemini declared, is the reason why the Russians are not making serious attempts to dominate Italy, but acknowledge it as a British sphere of influence. In spite of this he claimed that because of the mistakes of the occupational forces, democracy is discrediting itself. The average Italian, he said, now defines democracy erroneously as "Fascism plus hypocrisy."

"The GI is popular all over Europe, but although Sicily fell in 1943, there still have been no municipal elections because we fear that they will result in communist officials. In Southern Italy we did not know the leaders of each town so we kept the old mayors rather than hold elections and the old mayors were in many cases fascists."

Unlike the problem of German re-education, Salvemini stated that the corresponding problem in Italy was an overestimated one. "Fascism was for the most part a superficial organization," he added, "and you will find that Italian youth, contrasted to German youth, fought against the fascist government by joining the partisans in large numbers.

"The Germans like to work and obey; the Italians like to have a good time and enjoy life. That's why nazism worked as a national policy in Germany while fascism failed in Italy."

Salvemini offered his solution to the problem of Trieste by proposing a plebiscite to determine to which country it should be annexed. "Neither Yugoslavia nor Italy has a right to the city. It is not a slave woman to be traded back and forth between the country which has the best army at one time and that which has it at another."