Mo Union Now

For the Continent's ambitious Communist parties it was a week of rebuffs:

In Berlin (in the U.S., British and French sectors), Social Democrats voted 3-to-1 against fusion with the Communists. (To soothe any ruffled feelings, Social Democrats then voted 3-to-1 for "cooperation" with the Communists.) In the Russian sector, no poll was permitted.

In Greece, despite the Communist-led (| EAM's bitter boycott of the nation's first elections in ten years, some 70% of the electorate voted. Under the eyes of British troops and Allied observers, they gave the Populist (Royalist) Party an edge over the Republican (center) coalition. Spokesmen for the EAM. which a year ago had seemed unquestionably Greece's most popular faction, blustered: "There'll be another round. . . ."

In Italy, four old men, from right of center, formed a Democratic Union as a counter to Communist-Socialist cooperation. Three were ex-Premiers: Vittorio Orlando, 85; Francesco Nitti, 77; Ivanoe Bonomi, 72. The fourth was famed Philosopher Benedetto Croce, 80.

In London, at a stormy meeting of 300 Labor M.P.s, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin won a resounding victory over pro-Communist critics. His foreign policy was endorsed by a vote of 260-to-6, with 34 abstentions. In a belligerent statement,

Labor's National Executive rejected a formal Communist bid for affiliation:

"The Communists look upon democracy as a bourgeois fraud. ... A preference for dictatorship infests their internal organization. . . . The Labor Party has nothing to fear from competition under democratic rules, but the same party which is a negligible opponent in open contest can be a serious menace as a fifth column working from within. . . ."

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