Moments of Stress

By ANTHONY HARTLEY Brussels

0 N the surface Belgium does not look like a country with serious problems—more serious, that is, than those of any other country in these atomic days. In Brussels the long, glit- tering American cars circulate at great speed and with total disregard of other people's convenience through streets where traffic jams have been temporarily eliminated by the new system of high- ways and tunnels. In the shops labour- saving gadgets, silver, textiles, jewellery, radio sets, luxury foods bear tempting witness to the fact that the Belgian franc has been a hard currency for over ten years. The passers-by are well fed, the children well-dressed. Brussels is a city which has taken advantage of modernity without losing its own charac- ter. If the restaurants in the Rue des Bouchers are pleasantly old-fashioned (and, incidentally, rather cheap for what they serve), the airport at Melsbroeck is one of the most modern in Europe. Old- fashioned restaurants and modern airports make almost the ideal combin- ation: the elements of a country with- out a history.

Yet Belgium has a history—rather too much of it, even. This summer has seen Brussels decked for the wedding of Prince Albert, the King's brother, to an Italian princess and also for the visit of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia —a policy of balance of power, as a wit remarked—but from neither of these bright ceremonial occasions with their crowds, their uniforms and their flags were darker undercurrents lacking. The royal marriage had been the cause of political controversy, while the visit of an African sovereign was bound to make Belgians think of the other side of Africa: the Congo.

There are, indeed, several worries. Going from Brussels to Namur through the rolling country leading to the Meuse valley, the tourist will pass the linguistic frontier. There is nothing to be seen (though, symbolically, it lies near the transmitters of the Radio-diffusion Beige), but this is the fissure that divides Catholic from anti-clerical, monarchist from republican, right from left. The first series of adjectives describes the Flemish-speaking population of Belgium, the second the French-speaking Wal- loons, and the antitheses are broadly true, though open to exceptions. It is a line which always makes itself felt and at moments of stress threatens to divide the country—much as a plate might break along a crack if dropped.

At the moment there are several possible causes of strain which might produce a fracture—or a prolongation of the crack. They are the monarchy, the Church, the Congo and coal. Of these the monarchy, despite a good deal of heat and dust, is probably the least likely to set off a violent clash. The young King Baudouin seems to be popular and to have acquired more gift for contacts with his people since his visit to America. And his father, ex-King Leopold, has now left the royal palace after criticism of his interference in State affairs and of the plans for Prince Albert's marriage in Rome without the civil ceremony required by Belgian law —a gaffe which was attacked by both the right- and left-wing press, and which caused considerable embarrassment to the Liberal-Catholic coalition govern- ment of M. Gaston Eyskens. Unless the ex-King interferes again—and he hardly shines by his political sense—his son's position appears to be secure—not least because the end of the monarchy might mean the break-up of the Belgian State.

The clerical problem has not been eased by the present Primate of Belgium, Cardinal Van Roey. After the agreement reached between the three major politi- cal parties last November on subsidies to church schools, it might have been thought that he would have let sleeping volcanoes lie. But he has chosen to an- nounce that there is to be a compulsory levy on the salaries of priest-teachers in order to build Catholic schools, and, as last November's agreement provided for an increase in subsidies for teachers' salaries, but no subsidy for 'free' school buildings, this looks very like an attempt to evade the intentions of Parliament. It might be called bad faith, had it not been made by an archbishop. Under- standably, the president of the Christian Socialist Party has attacked the Cardinal's letter as inopportune and clumsy. But considerable damage has been done— not least to the Church which should have been thankful to have the educa- tional question taken out of politics.

In dealing with the Congo problem the Belgian Government has acted with firmness and with a liberalism which— thinking of the Central African Feder- ation—any British observer might well envy. After last January's riots in Leopoldville a new policy was formu- lated which received all-party agreement. The Congo was to be 'a democracy capable . . . of deciding its independ- ence.' There were to be local elections in most areas by the end of 1959, and, in 1960, provincial councils were to be formed, from which a skeleton 'cham- ber'. the General Conn-il of the Congo. could be created. Consultative councils were to be set up immediately at all levels of administration, and racial dis- crimination was to disappear. In May M. Kazavubu and other leaders of the 104

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Abako (Association du Bakongo) Party, who had been exiled after the January riots, were allowed to return to the colony in time for the visit of M. Van Hemelrijk, the Minister for the Congo.

So far, so good. But opposition to these plans soon began to appear. M. Van Hemelrijk was pelted with tomatoes by white settlers (shades of M. Guy Mollet in Algeria!) and it was said that his attempts to remove the Governor General, M. Hendrik Cornelis, had been frustrated by Court influence and by that of big business (the Societe Generale, which controls up to 65 per cent of Congolese economic life, was apparently scared by these liberal policies). More- over, the Abako Party, which represents tribal interests, suddenly went back on its apparent agreement to the Govern- ment's scheme and demanded a Central Congo republic carved out of the colony. Meanwhile the pan-African MNC (Mouvement National Congolais), led by M. Lumumba, was spreading its influ- ence. Though M. Van Hemelrijk has announced that he will carry out his plan whatever happens, it looks as if the time- table may have to be speeded up if serious trouble is to be avoided.

Finally, Belgium is suffering from the crisis of over-production of coal which is affecting all Western Europe at the moment. From the beginning of the year until the end of May, Belgian stock- piling of coal rose from 6,925,000 to 7,548,000 tons. During June it again rose by 100,000 tons, although production was only running at 75,000 tons a day as compared with over 100,000 tons at full capacity. Worse still, the lowering of coal prices on June 15 has not so far had any stimulating effect on demand. The inevitable result of this is the closure of uneconomic pits in order to rationalise the industry. Belgium, indeed, is bound to carry out such a rationalisation under the Coal and Steel Community treaty. Hence the fear of unemployment which produced the violent miners' strikes last February and which will almost certainlY bring about others of the same nature in the future. The miners, it should be noted, are Walloons, who showed them' selves at the time of the abdication crisis in 1951 to be among the most militant opponents of ex-King Leopold.

All these matters will call for attention from Belgian Ministers and Parliament when they return for the next session of the Chamber. All of them raise in one form or another the question of national unity. And even if the Government coir tinues to put off a decision on the nevi electoral law—a problem even more deeply fraught with Fleming-Walloon mutual suspicions—they will have $ great deal to do if they are to prevent political blood-poisoning from setting in. For a small country Belgium generates 0 remarkable amount of political and communal heat. And that is a luxuri which—unlike large American cars--t can hardly afford.