Man with Two Suits

"The will of God be done," said Luigi Einaudi one day last week. He had just been told that he had been elected President of the new Italian Republic. "May Italians never have to reproach me for the pride that I feel at this moment." He had not sought the office. Then he thought of the inauguration to come next day. In consternation he exclaimed: "But I don't have a black suit--only this grey one and my tweeds."

President Einaudi had assets that outweighed the lack of a black suit. The frail 74-year-old economist was a nonparty man who (as Minister of the Budget) had masterminded devaluation of the lira last winter, checked Italy's inflation. He was the one man that Premier de Gasperi's Christian Democrats and their main parliamentary allies--the Saragat Socialists and the Republicans--could agree on. And, though he was antiCommunist, even the Reds joined the applause when Einaudi (in his grey suit) was sworn in.

The story of his having no dark suit spread fast. Most other Italians had only two suits themselves: one to wear to their jobs; one to putter in. "He's one of us," said a white-collar worker as Romans turned out for the Inauguration Day holiday. Added a woman in a blue apron: "He was never one to take the State's money. He saved the lira. He deserves not to pay rent for seven years."

Einaudi's rent-free residence for his seven-year term will be the Quirinal Palace, former home of Italy's kings. It is a huge, drafty place, full of heavy furniture, and President Einaudi feared that he would miss the simplicity of his snug little villa on the Via Tuscolana, with its book-lined walls and plain desk. He made a visit of inspection last week. Limping through the high-ceilinged rooms (his leg was injured in 1926 when, after a U.S. lecture tour, he tried to swing aboard a moving Turin streetcar, American fashion), he issued his first orders. A lot of the massive furniture was to be taken out; his stacks of books and his plain old desk would be moved in.

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