The Old House

Europe, like the shell of a once great house, now burned out, bullet-riddled, sacked and gutted, groaned and listed as it settled on the debris of its foundations. In practically every country of western Europe last week changes of government were in process or in prospect. In all, so far, the changes were proceeding, if not peacefully, at least nonviolently. But even in the course of the most gradual transitions could be heard the grinding undertones of social change.

Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands had just completed, or were about to complete, new cabinets, in which resistance or leftist leaders dominated. Belgium was faced with a political crisis touched off by King Leopold's decision to return home. In France, the French defeat in Syria had raised new questions about the leadership of General Charles de Gaulle. Would he still be strong enough, by the time of France's national election next fall, to keep the right and left in suspended solution? In Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco's position had been further weakened by the snub given him by the United Nations' Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. Italian leaders, after seesawing for weeks, had at last formed a new Government but were promptly faced by a new crisis. Even in Britain, the fiercely fought general election campaign was a test to see whether social change should come gradually or seismically.

What the new political carpenters, plasterers and plumbers would do for the old house remained to be seen. So far they had been chiefly partisans and leftists. But if they did not build for all men instead of political parties, all mankind instead of a social class, their work would be patchwork, their tenure, as history reckons time, brief. And the despairing inhabitants would probably ask the next crew to raze the old house to the ground and start building over again from the ground up.

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