Italy Has Jeeps, Cokes, Monuments, Students Find

American influences, borne by the G.I.'s, have permeated the whole of Italy. The Rome police force travels about in a fleet of jeeps; chewing gum is in fashion; there is a coke stand on the roof of the cathedral in Milan. Coke even has a local competitor, a watery ersatz called "Presidento Cola," which comes in conical bottles.

During the war, U. S. soldiers made pocket money selling fountain pens to the Italians. Now the tables are turned. The streets are full of small boys selling cheap fountain pens called "Parker 51," which they manage to pronounce enough enough like "Parker 51" to make gullible Americans think they've found a bargain.

Venice Canals

The urchins had lots of prey. American students, lured by a dreamy conception of sunny Italy drawn from Browning, Fine Arts 11, and "The Lays of Ancient Rome," came down in swarms from France and Switzerland. In Venice, St. Mark's square looked as though all of Harvard had been transferred there for the summer term, and if you got lost in the incredible tangle of streets and canals in other parts of the city, it was a sure bot you could spot a seersucker jacket and follow it back to familiar ground.

As usual, the Americans ran into snags. One student stayed a little toe late in the Colosseum, and found himself locked in for the night--he only got out by dint of a great deal of shouting and pounding at the gate. Another unfortunate fell into the Grand Canal in Venice.

Quick Twist

He was standing with one foot on the quai and one in a gondola haggling with the gondolier over prices when the gondolier gave a quick twist with his car . . . One of the oddest hazards of the summer was the admonishment in a cata-comb in Rome, "Persons tampering with the relics will be excommunicated."

In spite of Italy's veneer of Americanism, however, a tourist feels more an outsider there than in Franco or England. The monuments and the works of art he has come to see are completely unrelated to the realities of post-war Italy: the beggars, the unemployment, the poverty, the ruins. Many of the rivers are still spanned by U. S. army Bailey bridges set on the bombed rubble on ancient edi- fices. Inflation is particularly bad in Italy--the lira is a mere fiftieth of its prewar value. American wallets were much too small for the wads of paper money they had to hold. The thousand lire note, worth about $1.75 this summer, was the size and consistency of a large piece of Kleenex.

Italian politics have quieted down since the critical elections last year, but the marks of the fracas are everywhere. The Communists apparently cornered the nation's white paint supply--every available wall space is still daubed with "Viva Il Partito Communisto" and the slogan "Peace, Work, and Liberty." ECA, which is financing reconstruction projects all over Italy, has cashed in on the party line. Its slogan is "Peace and Work."

Not all of Italian politics are serious. Guiliano, the Sicilian baudit, still maintains a sovereign state around Palermo against all efforts of the local constabulary. He is constantly in the news: at one point when the police commissioner put up a large reward for Guiliano's capture, Guiliano retorted by putting up a reward for the capture of the police commissioner. He has also offered to cedo Sicily to the U. S., but so far Washington hasn't taken him up on it