May 14, 1943
 
 
 
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
 
     
 
 
On April 27 the Cardinal Secretary of State informed  
my assistant at Vatican City that about two weeks earlier  
a streetcar filled with workmen had been machine gunned in   
the outskirts of Naples by American aviators. The  
Cardinal said that he had positive evidence of this incident.   
He said that other instances of American aviators  
machine gunning Italian civilians had come to his attention  
although he had not had an opportunity to verify them. He  
said that the reputation of the Americans in Italy was  
suffering by comparison with British practice as thus far   
experienced by the Italian public and hoped that instructions  
would be given our aviators to refrain from deliberately  
using their machine guns on civilians.
 
     
 
 
On May 6 Cardinal Maglione again raised the question  
with Mr. Tittmann, this time in connection with the American   
air raid on Grosseto. He stated it as a fact that the  
civilian population of the city had been deliberately machine