They Called It Nerve

With great fanfare, Italy's weekly Oggi began publishing sensational documents that suggested strange doings between London and Rome at the outset of World War II. A letter addressed to Mussolini and signed "Churchill" recognized Italy's "right to the Mediterranean." A draft Mussolini-Churchill "agreement" recognized "the grave possibility" of Britain's defeat by the Axis and asked that Italy safeguard British interests "at any future peace conference." There were other letters and papers, all showing low jinks by high figures.

For more than a year, one Enrico de Toma, a young last-ditch Italian fascist living in exile across the Swiss border, had tried to peddle these letters to various publishers. None would bite, for they had been denounced as fakes and forgeries by everybody involved, including Winston Churchill and Alcide de Gasperi. But such denunciations did not deter wealthy Publisher Angelo Rizzoli, who is Italy's most unclassifiable political figure. Signer Rizzoli publishes Candido, a savagely satirical weekly edited by right-wing Novelist Giovanni (The Little World of Don Camillo) Guareschi; Oggi, a slightly milder weekly with Monarchist politics; L'Europeo, which leans slightly left of center. To round matters out, Rizzoli is a close personal friend of Pietro Nenni, fellow-traveling leader of Italy's Communist-captured Socialists, often entertains Nenni at his villa and aboard his yacht, and contributes heavily to the Red Socialists' treasury.

Berlitz English. Neither was Rizzoli deterred when Novelist Guareschi published one of the fake letters involving ex-Premier de Gasperi and got a year's prison sentence for libel (TIME, April 26). Publisher Rizzoli bought a batch of the letters for a down payment of $20,000 and began spraying them across the front pages of Oggi.

Historians, amateur as well as professional, promptly began to spot gaping holes in Oggi's yarns, which were apparently designed to glorify Mussolini and embarrass the democratic politicians who now govern Italy. The English phrases attributed to Prosemaster Winston Churchill were so wooden that some other newspapers ridiculed them as "Berlitz-learned English." In one letter, "Churchill" referred to himself as Prime Minister at a time when he was still only First Lord of the Admiralty.

Artifacts. When police raided an elegantly furnished apartment outside Milan, they found papers, special inks and pens, lenses and other artifacts of the professional forger, as well as a man who admitted that the letters were fakes. This at last was too much for Publisher Rizzoli. Oggi discontinued the series and beat a feeble retreat. "If the truth about these letters ever comes out," said Oggi self-righteously, "it will be thanks to us, because only Oggi had the nerve to print these letters."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.