The Royal Rage

In Brussels' Laeken palace last week, Belgium's King Baudouin, raging at the news of the second U.N. resolution calling for Belgian withdrawal from the Congo, rounded on dapper Premier Gaston Eyskens. "This is the end," snapped Baudouin. "I demand your resignation."

In his wrath, gloomy King Baudouin, 29, spoke what was in the heart and on the lips of thousands of his countrymen. "What has this government accomplished?" roared Brussels' Le Soir. "It has gone from defeat to defeat. Never in Belgium's memory has our prestige been so low." Similar outcries came from the right-wing Liberal Party, whose 21 helping votes have kept Eyskens' Social Christians in office and the Socialist Party out. Hovering ominously in the background was a growing cluster of quasi-Fascist splinter groups whose members booed Parliament itself, marched noisily through the street with placards demanding "All power to the King."

Even Eyskens himself could not pretend that Belgium was not in sad straits, could not help but share in the general fury that Belgium had been "deserted" in the Security Council by its NATO allies, Britain and the U.S. Huffily echoing his party's bitter charge that Washington and London "refuse our soldiers the right to defend the lives and security of our compatriots," Eyskens said Belgium would have to consider reducing its military contributions to NATO.

But for all his bitterness, Eyskens had no intention of leaving office without a fight. And by his open intervention in politics, which evoked uneasy memories of his headstrong father, ex-King Leopold, King Baudouin had aroused the resentment even of politicians opposed to Eyskens. At week's end, playing for time, Eyskens promised a Cabinet reshuffle, called Parliament back into session for a showdown confidence vote this week.

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