Too Many Compliments

One bull-necked veteran in a heavy black overcoat leaped forward and tried to wrest the rifle from the nearest cop. Another gendarme smashed his rifle butt into the attacker's face. Thousands of throats roared defiance of the police and the Government. Belgium, the European belligerent to recover most rapidly after the war, last week was having a bonus-hungry veterans' riot.

Crackling machine guns, mounted-police charges and streams of icy water from fire hoses failed to halt the mob. Forty were injured.

TIME Correspondent Fred Klein literally felt the veterans' mood: "A crowd of veterans milled around my taxi, swung it around and deposited the front wheels on the sidewalk. Their leader pulled me out and seated me gently on the pavement."

Strong Words. The outburst surprised old (75) Socialist Premier Camille Huysmans. To deputies trapped with him inside Parliament during the riot he said: "We have already spent 7 1/2 billion francs on them. They have no right to complain."

But this first major violence since Communist Resistance groups rioted in November 1944 worried Belgian leaders. It symbolized the general malaise creeping over the country, after two years of relative prosperity and political unity.

The Government had done a good job since Liberation. The shops were full of goods, 1946 American cars rolled through the streets, multicolored neon lights made Brussels one of Europe's few gay capitals. By permitting a rich flow of imports, cutting prices 10%, keeping wages down and boosting taxes, the Government had licked inflation. But trade was stagnating. Wailed Catholic Opposition Leader Frans van Cauwelaert: "We have wasted our chances, we have squandered our resources. For too long now we have gobbled down the compliments of visiting foreigners, telling us how well off we are compared to other European nations."

The Cassandras could cite unpleasant facts. Coal production was 80% of the prewar level, iron & steel barely 87% of 1938 and only 65% of 1929. Exports last year totaled only 29,635,000,000 francs, while imports reached a whopping 52,690,000,000 francs.

Bright spots remained. Output of electrical energy had hit an alltime high, glass production again was normal. Belgium's rich Congo Colony piled up lush foreign exchange by exporting annually up to 5 billion francs' worth of copper, palm oil, diamonds and secret quantities of uranium ore (of which Belgians believe the Congo contains half the world's known supply).

Strong Medicine. In Brussels retail stores, uranium buttered no parsnips. Told that shopkeepers were complaining bitterly that they cannot sell their stocks and that many feared bankruptcy, the Banque Nationale's suave Governor Maurice Frere had a startling answer:

"I am glad to hear that. It confirms to me that we are on the right track. We are restricting our credit policy because we don't want inflation. Our shopkeepers have made huge profits in the last two years. They laid in stocks, believing that prices would continue rising. Now they are caught in their own greed. Some shopkeepers may go bust; I cannot help it. But when a depression comes, it will find us prepared. Our measures may be strong medicine, but they are healthy."

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