Umberto II of Italy to serve the new republic. The monarchy of the House of Savoy formally ended on 12 June 1946, and Umberto left the country. Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi assumed office as Italy's interim Head of State. Umberto and Marie José separated in exile; it had been an arranged marriage of state, following a long tradition of royal families. However, they never divorced, partly for political reasons. Some academics have explored Umberto's possible homosexuality. As early as the 1920s, Mussolini had collected a dossier on his private life for purposes of blackmail. Certainly during the war, newspapers asserted that Umberto was
The King and Country debate the University of Toronto and the University of Cape Town all passed motions affirming that they would fight for King and Country. Three weeks after it was passed, Randolph Churchill proposed a resolution at the Oxford Union to delete the "King and Country" motion from the Union's records but was defeated by 750 votes to 138, in a rowdy debate, where Churchill was met by a barrage of hisses and stink bombs. A bodyguard of Oxford Conservatives and police escorted Churchill back to his hotel, after the debate. Charles Kimber, who would later lead the peace group Federal Union, was