Eyes Right

Beaver-busy Belgians, their economic house in order, took time out this week to vote. In their first national Chamber of Deputies election in seven years, they swung toward the right.

With results nearly complete, the Christian Social Party, a revamped and somewhat liberalized version of the old conservative Catholic Party, led the field with 90 of the 202 Chamber seats, a gain of 17 over its prewar strength. Runner-up was Premier Achille van Acker's Socialist Party with 69 (prewar: 64). The Communists took 24 seats (prewar: 9), the middle-road Liberals toppled to 17 (prewar: 33). Neither the Catholics nor the leftists were now able to rule alone. The Liberals, enfeebled as they were, could still tip the scale either way.

Bound up with the election was the fate of Belgium's exiled King Leopold III. All parties wanted the monarchy, but only the Catholics, fervently keynoting the Belgian anthem's refrain, "Le Roi, la loi, la liberte" had campaigned to have Leopold back. Brussels thought the reluctant left-wing parties would agree to recall him--to abdicate in favor of his 15-year-old heir, Prince Baudouin.

The election was a stinging slap for a Government that had done much to put the country on its feet.

Of all Europe's battlefields, none had erased more of the scars of war than Belgium. As soon as the Germans vacated one end of a town, Belgians began repairing their roofs at the other. Under the energetic guidance of Socialist Premier van Acker, a basketmaker's son, they had gone on repairing, rebuilding. The dynamic, 52-year-old Premier personally directed the basic "battle of coal," lifted production from a piddling 23,000 tons daily at the beginning of 1945 to a thumping 80,000 tons daily at the end. Iron & steel, power output soared. Currency was cut to the level of goods available, prices were slashed, black markets broken.

Because Premier van Acker's Socialist-Communist-Liberal coalition had kept the nation's nose close to the grindstone, Brussels shop windows bulged with food, clothing, luxuries. The size and variety of Belgian rations made French mouths water.

A few days before the Belgian elections, the New York Times's wise Anne O'Hare McCormick ascribed the Continent's swing to the left largely to postwar upheaval. She wrote: "People voting in Europe this year are not voting their permanent political convictions. They are voting their . . . reactions to immediate circumstances." Well-fed Belgians seemed to be the first to bear out this analysis. They added a piquant touch of their own: a predominantly leftist Government had led the return to prosperity, which resulted in gains for the friends of Leopold.

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