Word: scelba
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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ARRIVED in Washington this week for a state visit: Mario Scelba (pronounced Shell-ba), 53, Premier of Italy...
Early Life. The son of a poor Sicilian sharecropper on land owned by Don Luigi Sturzo, Italy's great political priest, Mario Scelba was Sturzo's godchild and protege. At 15 Scelba began politicking in his home-town Catholic youth movement at Caltagirone. He became secretary to Don Luigi, who founded what is now Scelba's Christian Democratic Party. When the Fascists forced Sturzo into exile (in Brooklyn, part of the time), Scelba remained in Rome as his agent...
...Germans, he was-ironically-released within three days as a worthless catch. On the day of Rome's liberation, he joined the new five-man national directorate of the Christian Democrats. He served in seven Cabinets under Italy's Premier Alcide de Gasperi, wrote the Scelba law, formally banning Fascism, and for six years as Interior Minister directed national security against Communist insurrection. When he first took over, the police were so shoddy that Lawyer Scelba exclaimed: "If I were Communist, I'd start a revolution tomorrow." The Reds tried force eventually, but by then Scelba...
Personality & Private Life. Married, and the father of a daughter, he moved recently from his modest four-room apartment to the ornate Renaissance Premier's palace, Villa Madama. Pink-cheeked Premier Scelba likes good food and good wine, seldom smokes. Courteous, canasta-playing, flower-loving, he has a lawyer's respect for the letter and spirit of the law. When a high-placed Roman tried to get a government job for a friend, Scelba replied with icy politeness: "Dear Count, with full respect I must beg you to consider that I cannot take any account of your recommendation...
...than 25 visiting foreign rulers and heads of state have come to seek aid and accords, to form friendly relations and common policies. This week to Washington, which is to the West what Rome was to the ancient world, journeyed a visitor from Rome: Italy's Premier Mario Scelba (see box), who came with many purposes in mind but not with hat in outstretched hand. Said Scelba: He did not intend "to ask the American taxpayer to make any further sacrifice...