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PARTISAN REVIEW,
ICism have long since made it impossible for this people to experience
human guilt. The guiltlessness is not so important in itself as the corre–
late it implies: the inability to grasp profoundly the sickness of Europe
(their own sickness) and the need for its revolutionary change.
Will the sharpening tension between Left and Right lead to open
conflict and insurrection? This is the bad dream of the Allied Military
• Intelligence in the North. The meetings of the intelligence staff (con–
ducted by the British, and in which the Americans take a bored and lan–
guid secondary role) have been following an almost invariable agenda:
raids to discover arms hidden by the Italians; economic reports: which
plants need licenses or Allied money to start, and also much about strikes
and how to prevent them; but ending always with a discussion of the
great bogey of the general insurrection to be led by the Communists,
which was predicted for August, repredicted for September, and is
now put off by these prophets till the winter, that waits like Grendel.
The prospect of such an insurrection has also been played up by the
American press
(Time,
for example) , but nobody has made clear who
is equipped to lead it. There may be sporadic outbreaks as conditions
of life during the winter worsen and people are driven to unoearable
straits. (At times last winter for some people I knew in Rome it became
an overwhelming physical question : Can I hold out till the first warmer
days?) There may be a coup from the Right, but this could probably
be accomplished through largely parliamentary means.
The Communists? Their role will depend, of course, on Russia's
particular requirements at the moment in the international field, but I
doubt whether they are equipped-in terms of mass popular following–
to lead a general insurrection. The activity of the Russians towards this
possible insurrection is a mystery that causes considerable worry to the
gentlemen of Allied Intelligence. When two Russian officers were observed
entering the CP headquarters in Milan, a formal report (in proper dupli–
cate) on the subject went immediately to the desk of the chief intelli–
gence officer! But this little touch of bureaucracy was too much, even
for the solemn British, and a general smile went around: Well, well,
news!
4. .
I've had my own tiny and momentary peep into one of the things the
Russians have been doing in Italy.
Though Italy lies outside the seething pathways of central Europe,
the overflow of refugees nevertheless washes down from the North:
Jugoslavs, Rumanians, Poles, White Russians. The American flag outside
my building became an invitation to refuge, like the sight of a cross
over a cathedral in the Middle Ages. (The myth of
America Savior
still
blooming in the minds of Europe's millions! I was moved.)
