Off to Jail

U.S. readers of The Little World of Don Camilla, which tells of a gentle Italian priest's struggles with ungentle Communists, might picture the author as an amiable, chuckly type who would never have a hard word for anybody except Reds. Actually, Author-Journalist Giovanni Guareschi, 45, is a fierce monarchist, with a fierce mustache and a fierce tongue. Guareschi edits the brilliant satirical weekly, Candido, which pillories politicians of the center as well as those of the left. Three years ago, a Candido cartoon depicted President Einaudi (some of whose income is derived from vineyards) reviewing a troop of wine bottles. Caption: "These are the warriors of the Republic." For "vilifying" Einaudi, Guareschi drew an eight-month suspended sentence.

Lately, Guareschi has been feuding with aged (73) ex-Premier Alcide de Gasperi, whom he blames for the fall of the Pella government in January. Two weeks later, Candido carried an article on De Gasperi, referring to him as "the sniper of Castel Gandolfo," and as "cold, ruthless, devoid of all scruple." Along with that, the weekly reproduced a purported letter from De Gasperi, apparently addressed to a British officer in 1944, which called for Allied bombing of Rome as "the only way to break the moral resistance of the Roman people." De Gasperi pronounced the letter a forgery, directed his lawyers to sue for libel. The amount asked in damages was only 1 lira (about one-sixth of a cent); it was vindication that De Gasperi wanted.

When the trial began in Milan, Journalist Guareschi turned out to have a very poor case. He could not produce the purported original of the letter (it was in the hands of a shadowy, last-ditch Fascist living in Switzerland, who has had little luck in many attempts to peddle such letters to Italian journalists) De Gasperi's lawyers flourished a communication from Viscount Alexander, the Allies' wartime commander in Italy, who said "all that is written in the alleged letter does not agree with what I remember." They also produced a communication from the supposed recipient, Lieut. Colonel A. D. Bonham Carter, who said he had never received such a letter, had never been stationed at the place to which it was addressed. De Gasperi himself took the stand to repudiate the forgery and to declare: "It is dangerous to allow the birth and diffusion of legends which tend to portray the political men who opposed Fascism as petty politicians without scruple or love of country. Hitlerism was born in the humus of such legends."

On the trial's third day, Guareschi did not show up in court. In his absence, the judge found him guilty, ordered him to pay De Gasperi 1 lira in damages, $480 as a fine and court costs, and sentenced Guareschi to a year in jail. Said Don Camillo's creator: "I will not appeal. I will take up the knapsack with which the Nazi SS sent me to a German concentration camp, and will go to prison."

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