Pleased

Belgium's Socialist Foreign Minister, chubby Paul-Henri Spaak, journeyed to Paris last week to see what economic and political commerce was still possible between France and Belgium. He went back to Brussels with a trade agreement and a diplomatic understanding.

The trade agreement, which read like a barter arrangement between two isolated towns in the Dark Ages, chiefly provided that France should export some iron to Belgium in return for small quantities of Belgian coke.

The diplomatic understanding showed France's determination to act as a Big Fourth despite her exclusion from Yalta. General de Gaulle, who once said that the Rhineland must be French "from one end to the other," agreed to let the Belgians share in its occupation and to have an outlet on the Rhine. Brussels was pleased with the arrangement. The Quai d'Orsay was pleased with itself: "France," said an unofficial spokesman, "is thinking again in terms of resuming her old role of supporting the smaller powers."

Then, practically in the same breath, Paris and Brussels, with an anxious eye on Moscow, hastened to add that nothing they had done involved the creation of a western bloc.

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