"Educational" Is the Word

(See front cover)

With his bags all packed and his steamer passage to the U. S. engaged, Premier Paul van Zeeland of Belgium last week pushed through his Parliament's lower house a bill granting amnesty to those Flemish separatists still in jail or suffering loss of civic rights as a result of negotiating with the enemy during the German occupation.

The Flemish-speaking Belgians who demand separation from the rest of their tiny country are a pain in the neck to most Belgian politicians. The fact that Premier van Zeeland has determined to make peace with them has considerable bearing on his visit to the U. S. and the reasons for it.

"An amnesty is not rehabilitation," he explained last week, "and not a pardon. It merely means to forget the past and let bygones be bygones."

Several weeks ago at a White House press conference, newshawks brought up the subject of Premier van Zeeland and his visit to the U. S. President Roosevelt exhibited an expression of bewildered innocence that would have done credit to Lillian Gish.

"As far as I know," said he, "Mr. van Zeeland is simply coming to this country to get a degree from Princeton. Of course if he should come to Washington, I would be very glad to see him." Not for an instant did Washington wiseacres believe it was as simple as all that. They are firmly convinced not only that Premier van Zeeland has an ulterior motive in coming to the U. S. to get his honorary degree from Princeton, but that President Roosevelt is responsible for bringing him. Vaguely, but with conviction, the wiseacres talk about the Oslo Group.

Oslo Group. Because the Scandinavian nations speak nearly the same language, share the same royal family and were most ardently bound to neutrality during the War, they formed instinctively a tight little group that talked and voted alike during the early years of the League of Nations. Instinctively Baltic Finland joined them and also the Low Countries, Belgium, The Netherlands, minuscule Luxembourg. Nothing very practical was done about this group until December 1930, when delegates of all except Finland met in Oslo, Norway to try nothing more elaborate than a mutual tariff agreement. Main trouble was that the best individual customers of all these countries were Germany and Britain, no parties to the original Oslo Convention. When the grand World Economic Conference fizzled out in 1933, the Oslo Convention as an actual agreement was virtually forgotten. But because all the Oslo countries save Belgium were bound by no military alliances and pledged to neutrality in any coming war, the Oslo Group continued voting and thinking alike at international conferences. During the Ethiopian crisis in particular they cooperated with Finland and Switzerland, became known as "The League's Conscience."

Then three months ago came the quiet visit of young King Leopold of the Belgians to Britain, following the news that Belgium was breaking away from her French and British military commitments (TIME, Oct. 26). The bloc of European neutrals had a new and powerful ally, and a new spokesman in the person of Belgian Premier Paul van Zeeland. Nine weeks ago Premier van Zeeland won world attention by his easy but spectacular election victory over the Rexist Leon Degrelle, self-appointed leader of Belgium's Fascists. Now he will take the spotlight as a spokesman in the U. S. for European democracy.

Princeton Plan. Emotionally, and as a matter of practical domestic politics, President Roosevelt would dearly love to do something to ease the growing tenseness of European politics. The statement last summer by New York Times Correspondent Arthur Krock that President Roosevelt might call an international conference of the world's rulers was a trial balloon (TIME, Sept. 7). There followed President Roosevelt's trip to South America and his affirmation at Buenos Aires of the new "Good Neighbor'' policy of the U. S. Next came the conversations with Walter Runciman, president of the British Board of Trade; then talks with Canada's Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir. Very little has come of all this except a general understanding that the U. S. wants to be helpful. But Britain is embarked on an enormous rearmament campaign, is playing a more & more dangerous role in the Spanish crisis. To U. S. isolationists the little group of Oslo neutrals seem much safer best friends to have in Europe, and good friends to cultivate for a moral effect on England.

Present U. S. Ambassador to Belgium is a socialite Manhattan lawyer, old friend of Franklin Roosevelt, named Dave Hennen Morris. President Hoover's well-known Belgian Ambassador, Career Diplomat Hugh Simons Gibson, has since 1933 been Ambassador to big but remote Brazil. Last December Mr. Gibson welcomed his chief to Rio, then crossed on the Hindenburg for a vacation trip to Brussels. Last month Princeton announced that it was awarding an honorary LL. D. to Belgium's Premier van Zeeland at Princeton's commencement (June 22), and the Belgian Premier was making a special trip to accept it. Never ordinarily does Princeton announce the names of recipients of honorary degrees until Commencement Day. Still secret last week were the names of other men to be honored with Belgium's Premier.

Princeton Man. Most important thing to remember about Paul van Zeeland (pronounced van Zayland) is that of all the Premiers of Europe he is the only one who is by profession and training a banker and an economist.

Forty-three years old and an ardent Catholic (he once sued and collected damages from a Belgian newsorgan that accused him of being a Mason), Paul van Zeeland comes from an upper-class Belgian family, took his law degree in 1914 at swank University of Louvain, went immediately into the Army. Within a few months he had won the Croix de Guerre and become a German prisoner, interned at Soltau near Hannover. Released after the Armistice, he won a graduate scholarship to Princeton University in 1920. Here, with no thought of politics as a career, he studied economics under Professor Edwin Walter Kemmerer, famed "currency doctor."

Frankly a grind, Paul van Zeeland's extracurricular activities were limited to taking long walks in the country and pitching pennies at a crack in the sidewalk, but no roistering senior in a beer suit was ever more loyal to Old Nassau. Punctually every year Paul van Zeeland sends cards to every instructor under whom he studied. In the autumn of 1934 when Paul van Zeeland and a Yale friend attended an important banking conference, the latter scribbled the just-arrived score of a football game on a card and slipped it to the former--Yale 7; Princeton 0. Back from van Zeeland came the re-joinder--"Belgian Cabinet: Princeton 2; Yale 0." Cabinet Minister of Transport Vicomte Charles de Bus de Warnaffe was once a Princeton graduate student too. Mr. van Zeeland's brother and his nephew both studied at Princeton. He has promised that as soon as his elder son graduates from Louvain he shall study at Princeton.

Banker into Politics. After Princeton, where he wrote his M. A. thesis on the U. S. Federal Reserve System, Paul van Zeeland practiced law briefly, soon went to the Banque Nationale de Belgique, where he rose rapidly to be secretary, director, vice governor. The switch from state banking, generally considered a government service, to active politics was painless. Paul van Zeeland was made Minister-without-Portfolio in the Cabinet of Count Charles de Broqueville in 1934, with the special job of deflating Belgium's dangerously inflated currency. Parliament would not accept many of the reforms he suggested. Paul van Zeeland resigned in November, pulling the Broqueville Cabinet down with him. In March 1935, Paul van Zeeland became Premier of Belgium.

Since then van Zeeland has been widely heralded as Belgium's New Dealer. His financial reforms have gone through, unemployment has dropped, impoverished agriculture is now prosperous, but sober Paul van Zeeland sees himself in a larger role: leader of a new group of European powers. Hence his desire to placate Belgium's noisy Flemish minorities, hence his embarking on a quiet campaign no other Belgian Premier has dared: to make friends with The Netherlands.

Because The Netherlands controls the mouth of the River Scheldt, Belgians and Netherlanders have frequently been at odds for centuries. Van Zeeland is acute enough to realize that the two little countries must work together for their own good. In this he has been loyally backed by his King. Young Leopold has hired a Dutch nurse for his motherless children, setting a fashion among Brussels' smart set. Netherlanders are great colonial administrators, lately have been welcomed as colonizers in developing the Belgian Congo.

For personal reasons also Paul van Zeeland is anxious to better relations with The Netherlands. Previous leader of the Oslo Group is elderly, conservative Hendrikus Colijn, Premier of The Netherlands. His was the idea of reviving the 1930 group. After much sly spadework it was on his invitation that members of the northern nations met quietly at The Hague on March 3. Premier Colijn has not the youth, the personality, perhaps even the ability of Paul van Zeeland. But he is an important figure. If Paul van Zeeland is quietly to replace him he is very anxious to keep on the best terms with him, and that so far van Zeeland has done.

Educational. No shrewd observer last week expected anything very definite to come from Premier van Zeeland's return to Princeton. They did not believe that he had anything so concrete as even a trade agreement to offer Mr. Roosevelt. They did believe that the trip was an exploratory gesture by the Roosevelt Administration and the Oslo group looking toward more definite action, some day. They believed that from his wholehearted admiration for President Roosevelt and the U. S. and his shrewd knowledge of European conditions. Premier van Zeeland was the best man on the Continent to make the trip.

Last week a diplomatic oracle implicitly trusted by all newshawks, was interviewed on the subject of the van Zeeland trip. From him came but one cryptic sentence:

"Confidentially Mr. van Zeeland's visit to Princeton is just educational. Yes, that's the very word, 'educational.' "

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