BELGIUM: Achille’s Heel

“Smiling Achille” van Acker went to his native Bruges to celebrate 25 years of happy marriage. Then he came back to Brussels to face a crisis in the uneasy union of Socialists, Liberals and Communists which he had held in precarious balance for three months.

It was a member of his own Socialist party, Senator Henri Rolin, stubbornly fighting Minister of Justice Adolphe van Glabbeke over a secondary juridical matter, who brought about the downfall of Premier van Acker’s Government. When Van Acker demanded a vote of confidence, hotheaded Rolin and two other Socialists abstained, and the Government was overthrown 79-to-78. Smiling Achille beamed: “I am the happiest of men; all my worries are over.”

Other Belgians were far from happy. Would this mean another long political crisis, like the one that began last February? What about Van Acker’s economic program? In an effort to put Belgium’s economy on a sounder, more competitive basis, Van Acker had dealt firmly and effectively not only with Liberals and Catholics, but with his own working-class followers. To businessmen he had issued a ukase ordering an overall 10% price cut for commodities and services ranging from haircuts to sewer pipes. To striking workers in the grimy industrial Liege district he had sounded a harsh warning: “Watch out; you are in the process of endangering your future and the future of your children.”

Now the thankless job of steering the nation along the thorny path of recovery might fall upon the Catholic party, which favored the return of King Leopold III from exile. In pious, conservative Flanders, mottoes like “Wij eischen onzen Koning terug” (We want our King back) suddenly appeared on house walls. But in leftish, French-speaking Wallonia, an all-Catholic government might cause strikes and riots.

To the outside visitor, worried Belgium still looked like a land of plenty. Said one lean Frenchman, sitting behind a juicy steak in a Brussels restaurant: “Belgium may not be poetic, but you eat well here.”