Going Home

With their party in disarray in the wake of the nationwide strikes that they instigated, Belgium's faction-torn Socialists last week sent for the one man with enough eminence to restore their battered prestige and give them a fighting chance in this spring's elections. He was NATO's Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak, 62.

To much of the outside world, Spaak's name has long seemed to be synonymous with Belgium itself. During the war and in the reconstruction era that followed, Spaak was sometimes Belgium's Premier, but nearly always its Foreign Minister. As such, he was a major architect of postwar Europe, achieving by sheer eloquence and ability a stature that his country's size would not have otherwise commanded in the world's councils. He was elected the first president of the U.N. General Assembly in 1946, has since often given the impression that Belgium itself is too small an arena for his talents.

Since coming to NATO in 1957 as successor to Britain's Lord Ismay, Spaak has kept aloof from Belgian politics, is not tainted by any association either with last summer's Congo crisis or with the strikes, which cost Belgium an estimated $230 million and reopened the ancient quarrel between the northern Walloons and the southern Flemings. Spaak laid down one condition for his return to Belgian politics: virtually a free hand in the management of Socialist Party affairs. With no other candidate of comparable stature in sight, the Socialists reluctantly agreed. "Citizen Spaak is really very demanding," said one Socialist leader. "He takes himself for General de Gaulle."

Actually, Spaak needed little urging to leave NATO. He has long felt stymied in his efforts to extend NATO beyond what the U.S. and several other Western powers feel is its proper function as a defensive military alliance. They have blocked Spaak's efforts to mold NATO into a political and economic force capable of combating Communist infiltration in Africa and Asia, argued that NATO is not the proper organization for economic enterprise. At the NATO ministers' meeting last December, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, vetoed a suggestion for NATO aid to underdeveloped nations, said that there were enough organizations already in that business.

Often rebuffed, Spaak has threatened to quit several times. The call of Belgium's embattled Socialists finally gave him his out. "I expect for the immediate future a struggle that will be decisive for our country," Spaak told Belgians last week. "Are we going to continue to be bogged down in conservatism, weeping over our losses, or will we get a new deal politically, economically and socially?"

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