By midmonth the Luces were reunited, and ready for a vacation. Harry rented the Niki, a 190-foot, Greek-owned yacht with three officers and eighteen crew. They planned to explore the west coast of Italy, sailing south from Civitavecchia to Capri, Ischia, and Naples, then returning north via Livorno, La Spezia, and Portofino.
The yacht Niki (illustration credit 34.1)
Needing to keep abreast of clerical work and events, Clare invited a few diplomats and several of her staff to come aboard at various ports of call to talk shop. Her most important guest was Dr. Remigio Grillo, who handled American affairs at the Italian Foreign Office. He was smart, spirited, and flirtatious. During stretches at sea, he and Clare had such illuminating talks about international affairs that she asked him to stay until the end of the cruise. Grillo was equally impressed with her.
“Don’t worry about your Ambassador,” he said to Maggie Case, who joined them ten days out. “I believe before she’s through she will be hailed as our Joan of Arc.”19
Throughout the voyage, Clare assiduously kept in radio-telephone contact with the mainland. Maggie realized that she hated to be inactive or solitary. At various times, they were joined by Secretary Dulles’s brother Allen (Director of the CIA and a Catholic favorite of Clare’s); the British Ambassador to Italy, Sir Victor Mallet; her air attaché, Colonel Emmett B. Cassady; and Admiral William M. Fechteler, Carney’s replacement as Allied Commander in Chief in Southern Europe. Elbridge Durbrow was holding the fort in Rome, but his wife and children appeared, as did Dorothy Farmer and Jack Shea, loaded with documents, letters, and cables.
Clare held court, ebullient and tanned in stylish shorts and dark glasses, sunbathing on the afterdeck, playing with her poodles, and out-swimming everyone who dared to plunge off the gangway into the blue water with her. At mealtimes, informality vanished. Place cards, strictly observant of rank, were routine at formal lunches and dinners in the Niki’s stuffily furnished, wood-paneled salon.20
After the yacht dropped anchor off San Stefano on the evening of August 27, a crewman hailed Clare aloft to take a radio call. She was unable to make sense of anything on the crackling airwaves, so she took a launch to shore. Maggie, Harry, and Grillo accompanied her, and sat outside a trattoria eating gelati while she went into a telephone booth in the smoky interior and asked to be connected to “Rome 414.” None of the men drinking at the bar, or boys banging away at automatic table games, recognized the lady in overcoat and slacks as the American Ambasciatrice.
The following morning, Friday, she was back on deck, sporting a tasseled, multicolored Sorrento cap on the back of her golden hair, when Durbrow, wearing a dark city suit and carrying a briefcase, came up the gangplank. Clare went below with him, and they talked for an hour.21
After he left to return to Rome, Maggie deduced that something critical was brewing on the international scene, even though the cruise continued. Then, at noon, a storm warning forced the party to disembark again. The ambassadorial limousine, which had been following their progress along the coast in case of emergency, was ready to take them to Livorno. Harry ordered the Niki captain to proceed there, once the inclement weather cleared.
Livorno was a U.S. Army and Navy base, and Clare was scheduled to review the local troops on Saturday morning. Jeeps, trucks, and other field supplies stretched for miles around the headquarters, kept in reserve for American forces in Austria. In an emergency, this matériel would be transported through the disputed Free Territory of Trieste.
By late afternoon, the Niki passengers were back on board in the Bay of La Spezia, once Italy’s chief naval harbor. The yacht was dwarfed by the massive U.S. battle cruiser Juneau anchored nearby and preparing for Tyrrhenian Sea maneuvers. Its presence emphasized the barrenness of the dry docks along La Spezia’s embankments. Grillo, standing at the rail with Maggie, pointed out the ghostly, half-sunk, and gutted battleship Vittorio Veneto, and told her it was named for the last decisive World War I battle that had led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a spoil of war, Trieste, long owned by the Hapsburg dynasty, had then been annexed to Italy.22
He made Maggie understand, just as De Gasperi had Clare, what a fraught issue the Allied partition of the FTT was for Italians, uniting all of them “except the Communists.” He called Trieste “the Martyred City,” and remembered how in childhood he had been taught to sing an ode to it: “Our heart, we will come and liberate you.”23
Even as he spoke, Clare received another sputtering radio call from Rome. Durbrow reported that he had just been informed by Prime Minister Pella that the standoff between Italy and Yugoslavia over Trieste had escalated to a “most serious” state of crisis. Pella had not ventured any specifics, but the wire services in Rome were spreading news that Italian troops, guns, and tanks had been ordered to the border of Zone A, and were prepared to cross it at any provocation.24 The flint that had sparked this mobilization was a Belgrade press release stating that “Yugoslavia has lost patience with Italy on the Trieste question and is considering changing its moderate and tolerant attitude.”25
Later that day, however, the U.S. Embassy learned that the release had been “entirely untrue.” Nevertheless, Pella kept his troops in place, and Clare continued her cruise, pending developments.26
On Sunday, August 30, the Niki proceeded north toward the Italian Riviera. From the deck, as it cruised past the distant Apennine range, Clare could see the slopes where she had taken her hair-raising drives with Truscott in the last months of the war, visiting the mountain’s muddy battlegrounds. Now, eight years later, the peace pacts of 1945, meant to end all of Europe’s armed conflicts for good, seemed in jeopardy just because of a territorial dispute that, in essence, devolved down to twelve hundred yards of Trieste’s commercial waterfront.
To patriotic Italians, such as Grillo, reclamation of that prize port was a matter of national honor. To the occupying Allies, even a partial cession of it to Yugoslavia augured the possibility that the Soviet Union would woo Marshal Tito back into the Comintern fold, thus gaining strategic access to the northern Adriatic—in opposition to NATO’s emplacements in the southern Mediterranean. To Clare’s fertile mind, this meant that World War III could conceivably break out less than 250 miles from where she was currently sailing.
Despite the negation of the Belgrade press report, that day’s world headlines were ominous. The New York Times blazed, ITALY ALERTS ARMY: FEARS TITO PLANS TRIESTE COUP.27 All Allied furloughs had been canceled, and the Italian navy was ordered to the Adriatic.
Everyone aboard the Niki made the best of the last hours of the cruise, as the steward passed gin and tonics, and the yacht docked in the small harbor of Portofino. Above its cobblestone piazza and colonnaded houses, a castle nestled in the precipitous cliffs. Noël Coward appeared in a Jeep, and escorted the Luce party to call on Rex and Lilli Harrison. But first, Clare had to make yet another mysterious phone call, this time from the Hotel Splendido. For once, she was able to share her news, reporting that she had been summoned back to Rome to confer with the Italian government. Tomorrow morning a plane would come to collect her. “So, Madame Ambassador,” said Coward, “those Jugs are at it again.”28
That evening, Clare hosted a champagne-and-caviar farewell dinner in the Niki’s salon. She and Noël exchanged jokes and reminiscences. At fifty-three, he was still captivating, especially when he sat down at the piano, a red carnation in his buttonhole and a glass of white wine above the keyboard. He could have been performing at the Café de Paris. Listening to him play and sing songs such as “Tea for Two” was enough to temporarily banish Trieste from Clare’s mind.29
35
PATIENCE AND COURAGE
The insane fear of socialism throws the bourgeois headlong into the arms of despotism.
—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Clare arrived back in Rome on Tuesday, September 1, to find the city buzzing over reports that Yugoslavia had accused Italy of inciting war. In fact, the Foreign Ministry received an official
note of protest from Belgrade, pointing out that Italy’s deployment of troops on the border of Zone A represented “a gross violation of the rules of conduct among states maintaining regular diplomatic relations.” Pella’s government countered with a truculent declaration that Italy had “the full and indisputable right to take … any measure it judges necessary in given circumstances.”1
These developments made Clare’s hour-long meeting with Pella on September 3 urgent. It was their first encounter since he had become Prime Minister, but he was already an admirer of her work in Italy, telling the Supreme Allied Commander, General Alfred M. Gruenther, that he hoped she would “remain on this assignment for a long period.”2 Pella plunged straight into the current crisis. He said he would not consider withdrawing his troops from the FTT frontier until he heard what Marshal Tito might say in a speech scheduled for September 6, provocatively close to the manned border. Nor would he let Monarchists in Parliament force him to take more extreme measures, even though his coalition government depended on ultra-nationalist support.3
Confidentially, Pella told Clare that an acceptable solution could be “one based on a plebiscite.” But any settlement must be in the spirit of the 1948 Tripartite Declaration. He needed the backing of the signatory powers to help consolidate his regime, and unless the United States, Great Britain, and France exerted their diplomatic muscle, they might lose Italy as a friend and ally.4
Clare pressed him, as she had De Gasperi, on whether the Chamber of Deputies would in response approve expansion of American military facilities in Italy. Pella insisted that this and other issues of mutual concern could be addressed only after a satisfactory Trieste outcome. If not, the United States might continue to endure “the daily fatigue and frustration” of diplomatic inaction.5
Clare found herself largely in agreement with the Prime Minister about Trieste. In her report to the State Department, she said that any attempt by the Allies to persuade Italy to withdraw its troops from the border would weaken the Christian Democrats and “only strengthen extremist elements.”6
That same day in Washington, John Foster Dulles held a press conference that undermined her concern. He said that the United States “has been exploring other alternatives” to the promise of the Tripartite Declaration to return Zone A to Italy.7 There were immediate press and street protests in Rome, forcing the Chigi Palace to put its own protective spin on the Secretary’s statement. Dulles, it said, was merely suggesting that there might be a negotiable way of implementing the Declaration. But Ludovici Benvenuti, the Italian Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, privately subjected Clare to a twenty-minute tongue-lashing on Dulles’s “disastrous” remark. Tito, he said, was bound to take advantage of it, unless the United States issued an immediate clarification.8
Clare conceded that the situation approached emergency. She cabled the State Department that “failure to clarify the Secretary’s statement at once, and to seek a rapid resolution of the question … [would] endanger not only the future of a moderate pro-American government in Italy, but might crack open [the] NATO system in Europe.” Following up with a rare call to Dulles, she sounded so worried that he sent her a consolatory wire: “Was glad to talk with you on phone and have since discussed our conversation with President.… Please feel free always to send frankly your views. You can be sure we here do not minimize importance and danger in situation.”9
This assurance was too noncommittal for Clare, who took it upon herself to go over the Secretary’s head to Eisenhower. She used as an intermediary C. D. Jackson, who now had the unusual title of Special Assistant to the President for Psychological Warfare. If Pella’s government fell as a result of American emasculation of the Tripartite Declaration, she told him, it would be a moral, diplomatic, and strategic blow to the West. “I wish I were in Washington now.… I could then thrash all this out vigorously with Foster and Ike.” She asked Jackson to pass on to Ike her syllogistic summary of the dilemma:
For the want of Trieste, an Issue was lost.
For the want of an Issue, the Election was lost.
For the want of an Election, De Gasperi was lost.
For the want of De Gasperi, his NATO policies were lost.
For the want of his NATO policies, Italy was lost.
For the want of Italy, Europe was lost.
For the want of Europe, America.……?
And all for the want of a two-penny town.10
In response, the State Department instructed Clare on September 5 to ask Pella to withdraw at least some of the troops he had placed on the border of the FTT. But she refused, saying the Prime Minister would consider such a request “highly offensive,” because he had promised not to make a forceful entry unless provoked.11
She met with Pella again. He saw her by now as “our friendly mediator.”12 Neither divulged the content of their conversation. But The New York Times reported that Ambassador Luce had shown the Prime Minister a full transcript of the words of Secretary Dulles, and convinced him that “the deductions made from them were exaggerated.” In Washington, Dulles assured Ambassador Alberto Tarchiani that he anticipated no alternative to the 1948 Tripartite Declaration.13
Clare urged the State Department to consider allowing Tito to annex Zone B, so that in fairness the Allies could at once transfer Zone A to the Italians. Such a simple double handover “would constitute all [the] satisfaction that Italian public opinion would demand to continue to support the government.” It was a solution that might have been adopted years before, if both sides had not been intransigent over the question of equal rights in the port of Trieste itself. She asked that her proposal be given “fullest consideration” at a meeting of all five powers concerned—the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Yugoslavia. She suggested that the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, might be flattered if London became the conference locale.14
The State Department was impressed and, in a potential major shift of policy, agreed to “urgently” consider her plan.15 Its appeal was threefold: the Allies would be relieved of their longtime administrative burden in the FTT, a grateful Italy would remain aligned with the West, and Tito would understand that he might negotiate with, but not browbeat, representatives of democracy.
On the eve of the Marshal’s tensely anticipated speech, Clare advised that even if it was inflammatory, and Yugoslavia massed troops on the frontier of Zone B, Pella intended to take no countermeasures, so long as the border was not breached. He would be making a new policy statement of his own a week later.16
Despite her calm tone, she and her entire staff remained in a state of high alert over the Labor Day weekend. The Yugoslav Legation in Rome had already delivered no fewer than four notes to the Italian government, threatening that if “the abnormal situation at the frontier” was not ameliorated by diplomatic means, Yugoslavia would “be forced to take corresponding measures.”17 As a result, warships of the Italian navy were proceeding at full steam toward Venice.
On Sunday, September 6, President Tito appeared in a dazzling, bemedaled white uniform before thousands of Partisan veterans and workers at Okroglica. While he spoke, peasants lit bonfires that could be seen by Italian soldiers across the border.18 In Trieste, British police patrolled the city, fearing violence, and all leaves were canceled for Allied troops in the FTT.19
Tito, a lifelong Marxist, had been persona non grata at the Kremlin since his expulsion from the Comintern in 1948. He kept a bust of Lenin on his desk but not of Stalin, whom he referred to as a “Schweine.”20 He had risen to power as the leader of Yugoslavia’s anti-Nazi resistance in World War II, and in 1943 had been overwhelmingly elected Prime Minister. By January 1953, he had become his country’s all-powerful President, and seemed destined to be its dictator for life. Deeply disillusioned with the collaborationist role the Yugoslav Roman Catholic Church had played during the war, he was still holding Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in prison, and said he would never allow him to serve as Archbishop again. For this Tito had bee
n excommunicated by the Vatican, and was despised by Italian conservatives, not to mention Clare Luce. She persisted in seeing him as a once and future Soviet lackey, when in fact he lived in fear of a punitive attack by the Red Army. As a beneficiary of the Marshall Plan, he was flirting with the idea of joining NATO, if invited.21 Being half Slovene and half Croatian, Tito passionately identified with Trieste’s Slav minority.
Sounding conciliatory at first, he told the crowd at Okroglica that Trieste should be a free, international city. But he insisted that its hinterland—Zone B—be incorporated into his Slav Republic. Addressing the Italian government directly, he went on, “The Yugoslav peoples wish to have the last morsel of their national territory, and you must bear this in mind if you want peace.” He called for bilateral negotiations with Italy and, as a show of faith, promised not to retaliate militarily for the time being.22
The Chigi Palace reacted to this statesmanlike speech by accusing Tito of “megalomania” and devious opportunism. Clare’s own reaction was less apprehensive than wry. Noting the United States had supplied arms as well as dollars to both squabbling countries, she wisecracked, “At least, if Italy and Yugoslavia go to war, we’ll find out what American tanks can do against—American tanks.”23
Maggie Case saw her that afternoon, and found her preoccupied. After a while, Clare said, “I should talk to Ike.”
She weighed her options. “If I telephone him, these lines are listened in on. Should I fly over …? That might cause speculation.”24
Maggie said, “What do you care if everybody in Italy does hear you this time?”
She imagined, as did many Italians, that Ambassador Luce and the President talked often. In fact, Clare had not yet phoned Eisenhower about anything. But she needed to know directly from him what ultimate course he advised on Trieste. So she went into her bedroom and placed a call. All she would say on emerging was that Ike had promised “to look into the matter immediately.”25
Price of Fame Page 39
