Crossed Fingers

In spite of bewilderment in Teheran (see above), many people in many capitals of Europe and Asia knew quite well who the U.S. Republicans were, and had expected them to win.

How did these Europeans and Asiatics feel about the U.S. elections? They felt uncertain. They crossed their fingers.

From Nanking to London, there was much less uncertainty in the political prospect than in the economic. The essentials of the Byrnes-Vandenberg bipartisan internationalist line had been laid down so firmly that no well-informed observer expected the Republicans to repeat 1920 by pulling the U.S. back into its shell. But much of the world which had forgotten the extreme economic nationalism of the early New Deal remembered the Republican high-tariff tradition and the Republican pledges of rigid economy.

Said one foreign diplomat: "We have no reason for pleasant memories of the Republican Administrations in the economic field."

TIME'S London Bureau Chief John Osborne reported: "The British press almost with one voice told Britons that a Republican victory need not alter America's recent bipartisan foreign policy in so far as it is a political policy. But they were told to expect less and less economic sympathy or help from a Republican America."

Columnist Michael Foot, Laborite M.P., said that "American political ideology really is about 30 years behind Europe," saw a "whirlwind brewing on the other side of the Atlantic." The Conservative Daily Mail chided the embittered critics: "Such comment is as impertinent as it is stupid. The Americans have every ground for resenting it, in the same way that we resent uninformed American criticisms of our own actions. . . . The American people have exercised their democratic privilege of voting for the party that pleases them."

The Conservative Telegraph's gossip columnist wistfully admired the slogan "Had enough? Vote Republican," and suggested that British Tories negotiate for the loan of it.

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