Winter Proud

From the U.S.S.R., a year ago, came icy blasts that plunged all Europe into the misery of one of the worst winters it had known in years. This time the story was different. All winter long, while arctic gusts set the U.S. ashivering, strong west winds from the warm Atlantic bathed Europe in welcome balm. In France, where the weather was milder than it had been since 1921, the winter wheat last week was already standing six inches high. Parisian office workers were flocking to eat their lunches in sun-warmed parks, and tulip shoots stood two inches up from the rich, black loam of the Tuileries gardens. Along the Seine the first clochards (hoboes) of the season had taken their places to watch the tugboats pull rows of laden barges upstream and to wonder again why anybody should be fool enough to work in such weather.

"We Have No Fear." In greater or lesser degree France's mild weather was reflected throughout Europe, filling many a breast with the clochard's peace of mind. And there were more tangible benefits as well. As last year's evil winds from Siberia had helped the Kremlin's cause by promoting misery and despair, so this year's Atlantic zephyrs favored European recovery. France's wheat crop promised to more than double last year's meager yield of 3.5 million tons. French hydroelectric power was more abundant than at any time since the end of the war. Almost everywhere coal rations were proving adequate, and coal black marketeers were going broke.

In Belgium, peasants whose barns were dangerously bare of fodder because of last summer's drought gratefully set their cattle to pasture in fields that had stayed green all winter long. Dutch bargemen poled happily along canals that were free of January ice for the first time since 1900. With the canals absorbing some 60% of the country's freight traffic, hard-pressed Dutch railroads were breathing easy. In Italy, where the fragrant mimosa had flowered in December, thanks to the mildest winter of the century, cattle and sheep were grazing hoof-deep in verdant pastureland while farmers sent their plows deep into soft, moist earth. "Now that the sun is reaching again into the dark corners of the valley," sighed a pensive, copper-haired peasant woman of Anticoli last week, "we have no fear."

Even the Soviet Union, with its spring grain being sowed earlier than at any time since the Revolution, was now able to send the satellites of Eastern Europe something better than propaganda. Everywhere the winter wheat was ripening. Europe's prospects, plus the likelihood of bumper crops in Argentina and Australia, were already discernible in the break in the U.S. grain market (see BUSINESS). Europe's industry was benefiting in healthier, happier workers. With less coal going into family stoves, there was more for factory furnaces. In the Ruhr, absenteeism was down to three-fifths of last year's mark.

Crossed Fingers. There were some drawbacks to the fine weather. German floodwaters had put the Neckar, Weser and Ruhr canals out of business and closed the Rhine's Duesseldorf bridge. In Venice, the Adriatic had risen to cover St. Mark's Square and the Rialto. Torrential rains and melting snow in the mountains of France had sent Nancy, Epinal and Metz their worst floods in more than a century. In the Vosges 33 bridges were washed out. And with a month of winter still to come, there was always the chance of late frosts that might do more damage in the water-soaked ground than a whole season of bad weather. Even in Britain, where temperatures for January were only 3.2 degrees above average, farmers were watching with crossed fingers for signs of crops becoming "winter proud" or too advanced.

But Britain's fields, like the others, were pungent with the smell of freshly plowed earth. In Kew Gardens photographers snapped pictures of rhododendrons in bloom five weeks before their time. Here & there, jokers were at work. Enthusiastic residents of Scarborough, in a frenzy of excitement over the notes of the first cuckoo, were crestfallen to discover that the trills of good cheer actually came from a toothless street cleaner named Hezekiah Johnson. "I wait until a crowd gathers," admitted Johnson. "Then I go into a nearby park and cuckoo. They all take it in. I used to do a nightingale," he added, "when I had my teeth in."

Lest global optimists be taken in likewise, official sources last week were cautious about making predictions. "It is still too early for quantitative estimates," said a report from Washington, "but figures thus far received indicate that . . . the harvest in Europe during 1948 is likely to show an increase over that of the past two years." There were many problems of recovery, like Britain's dollar shortage and the gaping worldwide need for machinery and raw products, that a few days of fine weather could never solve. But if the winter had not insured Europe's recovery, it was certain--as one U.S. Department of Commerce official put it--that the mild weather had at least saved Europe a lot of trouble.

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