On Wednesday, September 9, Pella separately summoned Clare, the French Ambassador, and the British chargé d’affaires. He told them that Tito’s proposal was not a suitable basis for negotiations, and that Italy still demanded a full execution of the Tripartite Declaration. But he promised to withdraw his troops as soon as he could do so without appearing to yield. Clare told him that her “double handover” plan to resolve the whole question was currently being considered in Washington. That satisfied Pella, who emphasized, as De Gasperi had, that he did not want to negotiate with Tito directly.26
Some five thousand people gathered in the square outside Rome’s City Hall when the Prime Minister arrived on the thirteenth. Inside, two thousand packed the main salon, ostensibly to honor all those who had fought in wars to defend la patria. The salon was decorated with flags, and its walls were painted with scenes depicting national victories. After paying tribute to Italy’s veterans, Pella said he wished “with reason and without passion” to propose a plebiscite to settle the future of the Free Territory of Trieste. He asked the Allies to meet as soon as possible with Italy and Yugoslavia at a neutral site, to discuss a procedure for such a vote. As a prior condition, he demanded that Tito withdraw his soldiers from Zone B. The audience cheered repeatedly, and as Pella stepped onto a balcony to wave to the street crowd, he received another ovation.27
Unknown to Italians, Clare’s plan for Trieste had received administration endorsement at the highest level.28 This news must have leaked, because when Maggie Case returned to the Villa Taverna after hearing Pella speak, she received a call from an excited friend at the Chigi Palace, telling her to read a front-page Trieste story in Il Messaggero. The government itself had secretly and unprecedentedly worded one paragraph:
The report sent to Washington by Ambassador Clare Luce on the Italian point of view and on the situation created in Italy by Tito’s threats is complete in its information and precise in its conclusions. The text of this important diplomatic document has not been made public.… But Italian journalists in the United States have indicated the tenor of the report and have justly expressed the satisfaction and gratitude of Italy for the wise and energetic move on the part of Mrs. Luce. By this step she has again given new proof of the sensibility with which, while loyally and intelligently serving her own country, she also serves our common cause and demonstrates the greatest friendship for the nation in which she is such a welcome guest.29
A chorus of praise followed from other once-mocking Italian newspapers. “Perhaps never in the whole of history has a great nation owed so much to so small, fragile and gentle a woman,” remarked Corriere della Sera. Even Giovanni Guareschi conceded in Candido that the Ambasciatrice had “great tact and intelligence,” in contrast with Secretary Dulles, who had “acted with the delicacy of a hippopotamus.”30
The following evening, Clare gave Maggie a farewell dinner à deux in the Villa Taverna. Close to tears, the older woman raised a champagne glass and muttered something about leaving her “on a note of triumph.” After a quarter century of watching Clare’s inexorable ascent, she felt she had witnessed the conquest of another pinnacle. “It had not come through beauty, ease and facility,” Maggie wrote in her diary. “She had worked hard every step of the way.”31
Steeper and more perilous steps confronted Ambassador Luce in the weeks and months immediately following. She left Rome on Thursday, September 17, for an American Chief of Missions meeting in Luxembourg on “Top Secret Security Information.” Attending were Charles E. Bohlen from the USSR, C. Douglas Dillon from France, Winthrop W. Aldrich from Britain, James B. Conant, Special Envoy to Germany, John C. Hughes, the U.S. Representative to NATO, and David Bruce, Representative to the European Defense Community (EDC). For the first time, she was to be at close quarters with a group of her more experienced American diplomatic peers, some of whom did not look favorably on her.32
Dillon was particularly prejudiced. “She hasn’t got anything except Time, Life and Fortune.”33 Bohlen resented Clare’s constant haranguing of Communism over the years, which made it more difficult for him to maintain amicable relations with Moscow.34
The first session at the two-day gathering was a briefing by Bohlen entitled “The Soviet Scene.” This was a critical topic since Stalin’s death in March and the succession to the premiership of the colorless Georgi Malenkov. There had been lethal power struggles within the Presidium, marked by the June arrest of Security Chief Lavrenti Beria, less than seven weeks before the surprise detonation of his main project, the RDS-6s hydrogen bomb. Designed by Andrei Sakharov, and twenty-six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, it was the most terrifying weapon yet in the international nuclear arms race, giving the Soviets defense parity with the United States.
Just four days earlier, Nikita Khrushchev, Beria’s dynamic nemesis, had been appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party. Churchill was trying to persuade Eisenhower to meet the Kremlin’s new leadership, since the only senior bureaucrat in the regime known to the West was a Stalinist hard-liner, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. One of his bon mots was that he mistrusted free elections, because “you never know how they are going to turn out.”35
Next came Bruce, who gave a briefing on the status of the still-unformed EDC. This embryonic organization envisaged a common European military force composed of units contributed by six member states, including West Germany. Bruce saw it as more likely to constrain the Germans than allowing them to rearm under the American-dominated NATO umbrella. Eisenhower was even more ambitious for the EDC, hoping that it might lead to the economic and political unification of the Continent, a proposition soundly opposed by the gallocentric Charles de Gaulle.36 Churchill, too, was dubious, calling the proposed EDC treaty “a sludgy amalgam.”37
In the afternoon Clare, as the junior envoy present, spoke last. Her subject was how Italians felt about the EDC and the Trieste problem. Simply put, she said, they were lukewarm about the former, and red hot about the latter. If Stalin’s death had eased East–West tensions, Chigi officials were asking, why should Europe arm itself further, since it already had the protection of NATO? Pella saw the EDC mainly as a bargaining chip, and was pushing for a settlement of Trieste before he would even consider signing the treaty. Her task was to “unlink” the two issues, “so that each may be seen on its own merits.” As for the United States, it surely wanted to lighten its foreign military burden, “in the cold face of Europe’s unwillingness to integrate its own defense.”38
David Bruce was impressed by her analysis of the Trieste situation, saying later it demonstrated “an experienced diplomatic mind.” In his opinion, she was “smarter than any man present.”39
That night at dinner, a weary Clare unwound with alcohol, and shocked her colleagues with loud remarks about Alfred Kinsey’s new report on women’s sexuality. She said she had been asked to write a review of it, but in light of her current position felt the assignment inappropriate. Had she accepted, she said, her voice rising, she could have pointed out that a 480-page study was not needed “to prove that all men are dopes.”
The dining room went quiet. “After all,” she went on, “women are not interested in sex. All they want is babies and security from men. Men are just too stupid to know it.”40
The following day’s discussion topics were psychological warfare, and American foreign and economic policy. All the envoys lauded the recent West German reelection of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who strongly favored European integration. Concerns were expressed about the health of the aging Winston Churchill, and that of his likely successor, Anthony Eden. Another problem cited was Britain’s need to reduce its defense commitments abroad, especially by removing troops from Suez.41
Clare flew on to Frankfurt for briefings on strategy at the United States European Command headquarters, and returned to Rome on September 22.42 A week later, Tito formally rejected Pella’s plebiscite proposal. However, he still expressed a desire to hold a dialogue with Italy. Wild rumors cir
culated in Rome that the Italian Ambassador in Moscow was seeking Soviet backing of the Tripartite Declaration, in exchange for a refusal by his country to join the EDC. Meanwhile, the Italian press speculated that the Allies were about to make a decision unfavorable to Yugoslavia.43
At 9:15 on the morning of October 8, Clare and Sir Victor Mallet met with Pella and read him the text of a momentous new Anglo-American declaration, to be released to the press later that day. Simultaneously in Belgrade, their counterparts delivered the same text to Tito. The crux of the statement, replacing the Tripartite Declaration of 1948, was that the Allies were “no longer prepared to maintain responsibility for the administration of Zone A.” Therefore, they intended to withdraw their troops immediately from the Free Territory of Trieste, “and having in mind the predominantly Italian character of Zone A,” were ceding the government of the area to Italy. Yugoslavia could have Zone B, which it already administered.44
The wording of this statement, henceforth to be known as the October 8 Declaration, was in parts almost identical to Clare’s own recommendations to the State Department. She was authorized to inform Pella secretly that as far as the Allies were concerned, the new “de facto settlement” was final. Should either country later wish “to initiate bilateral negotiations with a view to modification of boundaries, the U.S. and the U.K. governments would not intervene on behalf of either party.”45 Since the end of the war, America had been spending $10 million and Britain £2 million every year in Zone A, and they were tired of the financial burden.46
Tito balked at these unilateral and arbitrary terms, and asked that they not be made public until he had consulted his government. But the Allies went ahead and published the October 8 Declaration at 4:00 P.M. as planned. “Thanks for the skillful way in which you have handled delicate and important program for Trieste,” Dulles cabled Clare, “first reactions indicate that operation will be successful.”47
As it turned out, the Secretary was overly optimistic. Tito’s formal response a few hours later was vehement. Dropping his earlier placable tone, he announced in two angry speeches that he had increased his forces in Zone B, and massed more troops along the Zone A border. He threatened that if any of Italy’s soldiers marched into Zone A, Yugoslavia’s would, too.
Ominously, the USSR protested the October 8 Declaration as a “gross violation” of the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947. Andrey Vyshinsky, the Soviet Representative to the United Nations, went before the Security Council in New York, and said that Moscow “would not tolerate any decision in the dispute over Trieste unless the Soviet Union has a hand in it.”48
Demonstrations broke out in Yugoslav cities, and escalated to the vandalizing of Allied and Italian-owned buildings. Tito’s Partisan veterans shouted, “Zivot damo, Trst ne damo” (We gave our lives, we did not give Trieste).49
Claire Sterling, a respected columnist, wrote in The Reporter, “U.S. diplomats who generously shared the credit and acclaim when their brilliant coup was first announced, have every possible reason to be worried now.”50
Dulles, alarmed by Tito’s reaction, asked Pella to be prudent, saying that Communist Yugoslavia was not likely to be bound by “restraints from the use of force inherent in a Christian society.”51
Keen to head off Russian interference, Tito proposed a four-power conference of American, British, Italian, and Yugoslav diplomats to resolve the crisis once and for all. (France had signaled its weariness with the whole Trieste issue.) The Marshal’s requirements were reasonable: guarantees from Italy that Slovene rights in Zone A be respected, and from the Allies that Italy not be allowed to expand elsewhere in the Balkans.
Clare had no objections to Tito’s proposal, pointing out that she had suggested a similar conference herself. Pella informed her that it was no time to appease the Marshal, adding that if the Allies gave even the “impression” that they were reneging on their commitment, he would resign. The Prime Minister made this threat public in the Italian Senate on October 17.52
By now Clare was fretting over the slow pace of negotiations. “I’ve been here six months,” she told Durbrow. “We lost the election. The government spends its time fighting itself.… I’ve accomplished nothing!”53 Yet she continued to drive herself, often putting in sixteen-hour days. Dorothy Farmer feared a breakdown, and shared her concern with her counterpart in New York, Dorothea Philp. “You are probably familiar with this mood: working feverishly, everything has to be done immediately, all that has been done has been done wrong, and the most insignificant item becoming suddenly the most important, etc. etc.… Her mind is 100 percent occupied with the current situation—and when she’s at home she keeps the radio on.”54
Courtesy of Dr. Milton Rosenbluth in Manhattan, Clare kept going on a daily cocktail of drugs: three doses of Dexedrine for fatigue (preferable “in every way,” he said, to her usual Benzedrine); one or two Trasentine before meals and two tablets of Syntrogel after, to ease abdominal cramps; one tablet of painkilling Spasmalgin every four hours; and one or two sodium amytal for sleep.55
On October 27, Clare collapsed with influenza. That same day, she was humiliated to hear that Sir Victor Mallet had seen a preliminary draft of an Eisenhower-approved Trieste initiative—only loosely based on her original proposals—that had not come to her. It proposed a delay in handing over Zone A to Italy for as long as talks lasted, potentially committing the Allies to another year or more of occupation of the FTT. After getting a copy, she felt it amounted to a face-saving concession to Tito, and made her displeasure known to Dulles.
“I cannot believe that the U.S. seriously intends to back-track, weasel, welch, renege or—since the Department prefers the euphemism—to ‘finesse’ its decision to proceed with the transfer.” Dulles tried to mollify her, saying he had not known about that particular draft either. It was merely intended for discussion by low-level staffers on either side. To avoid a similar mishap, he wrote, “I have given instructions that despite the expense involved significant working papers are to be telegraphed to you—even before they have evolved into formal shape.” Trying to be conciliatory, he signed off with congratulations “on your excellent work in this difficult task.”56
Pella also exploded, in a note to Dulles that insultingly questioned America’s good faith regarding the October 8 Declaration. The Secretary refused to accept it from Ambassador Tarchiani, asking if Pella understood the consequences of such language. Tarchiani tried to explain that the situation in Italy was one of “suspicion, diffidence and despair.” Dulles assured him that the Allies meant to honor their commitment, but not “in such a way as to start another war.” Speaking with unusual bluntness, he added that if Italy thought it could dictate the foreign policy of the United States, the Eisenhower administration would have to make “a radical revision” of its strategic attitude toward southeastern Europe.57
Clare recovered enough by November 3 to send Eisenhower and Dulles an “Eyes Only Top Secret” estimate of the Italian situation, warning both that an overlong delay in implementing the October 8 Declaration would result in Pella’s fall, followed by “a chaotic political situation among the weakened, strife-torn anti-Communist parties.” If significant Communist gains in the next few months went unchecked, she wrote, then Italy might see a counterreactionary swing to the right.58
In a gloomy letter to the White House, Clare wrote, “If the Cominform left gains only 4 percent from the Center to Right parties by the next elections, the President of Italy will be required by the Constitution to call upon a Cominform leader to form the next government.”59
Eisenhower, a voice of reason and restraint, answered in a long personal letter. “I assure you that, as far as I know, we have no intention of weaseling … on Trieste.” Although Italy’s response had been supportive, he wrote, “this unquestionably made Tito feel that he had to react adversely and much more vehemently than he otherwise would have.” Accordingly, “a situation has been created where we must observe sufficient caution that we do not almost
force Italy and Yugoslavia into even deeper trouble in order to save face on one or both sides.”
Ike continued with an observation that could hardly have made Clare feel satisfied with her efforts, or secure in her post. “It seems odd that of all the countries in which we have been opposing Communism, we have had less success in Italy than any other.” Despite growing prosperity as a result of United States aid, “every report from Italy bears evidence of an increasing resentment against us and increased respect for the Soviets.” Clare could not deny the truth of this.
The President continued, “So while I accept in its general sense your argument that the United States must give to Italy increased concern and interest—to say nothing of money—I believe also that a great burden of responsibility rests upon the leaders.” He suggested that Clare give him fewer exhortations about what “material, moral, and political” assistance the United States should lavish on Italy, and more suggestions as to what kind of pressure she could apply to make Italians help themselves.
To soften this obvious reprimand, he handwrote an encouraging P.S. “You are really going good.”60
When Clare awoke on November 6, Rome radio was broadcasting reports of bloody riots in Trieste. Some twelve thousand Italian nationalists, stirred by the thirty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the city at the end of World War I, had marched into the Piazza dell’Unità and clashed with British military policemen. Pella, fearing similar violence at home, ordered city schools and universities closed.
By chance, Clare had a meeting scheduled with him that morning. She went ahead with the appointment, and presented yet another top-secret initiative from Dulles. It was that the Italian and Yugoslav prime ministers should choose a personal representative to discuss a Trieste solution with Allied diplomats in Washington or London. Their instructions would be to pave the way, or replace the need, for any multinational conference.61
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