"There Are No Belgians"

After three weeks of turmoil, Belgium still limped along in semiparalysis. Day after day, grim-faced leaders trooped into Laeken Palace to confer earnestly with the young King. Just as regularly, the long, winding procession of strikers set off from the Socialists' headquarters in Brussels' Maison du Peuple to march through the streets in continued protest at the government's economic austerity program. The big steel plants around Liege, Mons and Charleroi remained dark and empty. In the southern Walloon country, angry strikers set up roadblocks when the gendarmes were not around, hurled four-pronged nails on the roads to discourage profiteering taxi drivers.

When Parliament reconvened after the holiday recess, Premier Gaston Eyskens and his Liberal-Christian government brushed aside Socialists' demands that the Loi Unique be withdrawn, won a vote of confidence 121-83. Those who knew the Premier and his unyielding tenacity predicted that he would fight it through to the bitter end. At 55, Eyskens has lost neither his native Flemish stubbornness nor his passion for cold, precise logic. The stubbornness was vividly illustrated last year when even King Baudouin was demanding his resignation after the Congo was lost; Eyskens held fast, and Baudouin gave in rather than make the squabble public. The logic emerges in the Loi Unique itself. A classic economist who left a Louvain University professorship to enter politics, Eyskens is convinced that Belgium's survival depends on drastic economic reforms to modernize taxation, clean up the maze of welfare state payments and reduce spending. His sweeping new catchall bill steps on the toes of rich and poor alike.

Real Division. But it was becoming ominously clear that blocking Gaston Eyskens' bill was no longer the lone, clear issue among the swirling mobs of strikers and the Socialist slogan slingers. The dammed-up bitterness of a nation sharply divided for generations was flowing again, underlining anew the point made by a statesman to his King 40 years ago: "Sire, there are no Belgians. There are only Flemings and Walloons." The largely agricultural Flemings of the Dutch-speaking north for years have felt that successive governments have discriminated against them in favor of the French-speaking Walloons of the industrial south, where pay generally is higher. More recently, the strongly Socialist southerners have noticed foreign firms stepping up investment in the north to take advantage of lower wages, intensifying the old rivalry.

Last week there was open talk of abolishing the present system of government in favor of a loose federation between two self-governing states, one Flemish, the other Walloon. In Brussels, Socialist Deputies from Wallonia held a meeting without the Flemish Socialist members, issued a communique without precedent in Belgian political history. The communique noted that "government policies accentuate and accelerate the deterioration of the economic situation of Wallonia," and declared that "if these policies are not changed, the Walloon people will have no alternative but the revision of the unitary institutions of the country in order to choose itself the means for its economic and social expansion."

Smashed Hopes. Clearly implicit was a threat to the throne itself, for there was no provision for a King in any of the vague federation schemes being promoted. Feverishly, Baudouin himself began summoning party leaders -- including the Socialists -- for urgent talks on the assumption that once the labor trouble ended, demands for federation would fade.

But in strike-bound Liege, the Walloons' Andre Renard, deputy secretary-general of the Socialist-led General Workers Federation, rose to tell 30,000 workers at a union rally that the strikes must go on at any cost. A thousand rowdies broke from the crowd and rampaged through the streets, smashing the glass facade of the railway station, overturning police cars. For the first time, troops opened fire to quell the trouble; by the time they had driven the mob to the banks of the Meuse River, two strikers had been wounded by their bullets.

At week's end Eyskens reportedly was standing firm. But even he was talking of dissolving Parliament and calling for elections once the Loi Unique was passed. There were many who feared that things would not stop at that.

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