Europe in the Spring

From Sicily to the North Cape of Norway, the first days of spring brought clearing skies to Western Europe. Snow (enough for good skiing) lingered in northern Sweden, but in Stockholm people lounged at noon on steps and benches, tilting their faces to the new sun. One spring night last week at Josefsberg in the Russian Zone of Austria a Red Army soldier had a quarrel in a nightclub; he came back later with a Tommy gun, sprayed the dance floor with bullets, killed the band leader and a customer, wounded more than a dozen. In Britain, country fields shone dazzling green in the clean light, and London shop girls carried home small bouquets of daffodils in the Underground.

In Paris, sidewalk cafes were lined with customers sipping aperitifs or spooning sweetened ices; children sailed toy boats in the stone-rimmed pond of the Luxembourg Gardens. In Italy, peasant women remarked on the number of hens laying two eggs a day; perhaps it was the warm weather. And in Western Germany, after one of the wettest and greyest winters in 20 years, the sun was shining again, fitfully, but shining.

Spring brought work as well as play and immemorial festival. It also brought, as always after the cold days and long dark nights, a mood of revived hope. Europe needed it. For the mood of Western Europe was a mixture of anxieties as much as hopes, of discouragements as much as resolution. A great deal of the European mood was apparent in what people did and chatted about; something more became clear in the answers they gave in simultaneous surveys* of what they thought and expected.

In what they did and thought the people of Western Europe displayed a similarity of hopes & fears, of cherished habits and guarded optimism about the future. Differences existed, and some were striking. But, looking back on '48, historians might find the differences less important than the likenesses. Outside the Iron Curtain, Europe, for better or worse, was one.

"Compared with last year at the same time, do you think you are now better off, worse off, or about the same?"

Europeans find little to cheer about. Thirty-four months after V-E day, recovery has come so slowly--so much hope has been deferred--that few can bring themselves to say they feel better off (though engaged couples, newlyweds, and young lawyers busy with their first cases nearly always do say so). In Sweden, in Switzerland and in Italy most say that their condition is "the same." In Britain, France and the U.S. Zone of Germany, most say "worse":

Better Worse Same Undecided

Britain 17% 46% 36% 1%

France 9 59 31 1

Sweden 27 18 53 2

Switzerland 26 24 45 5

Italy 33 30 36 1

U.S. Zone 10 54 36 -

The deepest dissatisfaction was found not in Italy (where, on the eve of historic elections, many declare themselves "better off"), but in France. Two pieces of testimony, from opposite poles of French life, show how relative the sense of ill-being can be. Said a not-too-clean salesgirl, in a slum grocery shop in Paris: "I get 9,000 francs [about $30] a month; not enough to live on and too much to die on. . . . I don't know about [political issues]. All I know is that I can't live on my salary and that prices have to go down."

In another part of Paris, a countess with a centuries-old name expressed it differently. She lay back in a deep armchair and waved a delicate hand in a vague, tired gesture: "Whether I am better off? Ma pauvre amie! A year ago I still had my servants--I can't afford them today. I go to market myself, line up in the queue and join the discussion of the housewives about carrots. There were times in my life when I didn't even know what carrots were."

Mourned Jean Cocteau, poet, dramatist and conversationalist: "Sometimes after dinner with a celebrated group of brilliant minds, the talk in the salon over the coffee is about the high price of butter and eggs. Such a subject does not lend itself to brilliance!" But anxiety focuses on more than carrots and conversation. In the survey, fewer than one-third of all Europeans believe that there exists "a fairly good chance" to avoid a major war within the next 25 to 30 years. Asked further: "Which side [U.S. or Russia] do you think is gaining ground today and which losing ground?" most Europeans, casting up rough accounts in the aftermath of Czechoslovakia, answer "Russia":

Russia U.S.

Gaining Gaining Undecided

Britain 43% 19% 38%

France 42 23 35

Sweden 33 31 36

Switzerland 45 27 28

Italy 38 32 30

Yet somehow, the European feels, catastrophe will not strike tomorrow or the day after. Consulting his expectations, he believes that he is likely to be better off five years from now, in the spring of '53, rather than worse off. Most optimistic are Britons (3 to 1) and Italians (5 to 1). Meanwhile, despite economic and political issues that devil him whenever he stops to think about them, the Western European has work to do.

FARMERS EVERYWHERE, busy with spring chores, were giving thanks for the mild winter. Even the blast of snow and freezing weather that had hit Britain in mid-February had been rather welcome. Said a toothless Suffolk fanner: "The crops were coming up too fast. The snow put 'em to sleep. Now, unless a May frost comes along to stab us in the back, there'll be a bumper." Sheep Raiser Ben Alderson of Kerry, Montgomeryshire, had a bumper already; one of his ewes had just produced five lambs, a circumstance considered remarkable enough to be recorded in the stately Times.

In Norway, the big Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang front-paged a two-column hymn to spring; south Sweden's farmers started plowing & sowing. In Italy, luscious shoots of green wheat stood two notches higher than usual (though heavy-booted peasants asked themselves, "Will we see the harvest?"). France expected the first good wheat crop in two years. The Rhineland hoped for another fine vintage year like 1947.

Industries were busy too. British miners produced more than 4.3 million tons of coal in one week, the best output this year. The British were finding it possible, at this rate, to ship more coal abroad. There was a big drive to export more British-made cars: manufacturers noted somewhat sadly that in 1947 the U.S. had bought only 1,127 of them--less than half the number sold in the Channel Islands (2,411).

In yards along the Clyde, the Mersey and elsewhere in Britain, some 200,000 were at work building 2,000,000 gross tons of shipping. Swedish yards, with 182 ships building or on order, were also booming. Not all the ship news concerned construction: the British battleships Ramillies, Queen Elizabeth and Malaya were being readied for scrapping; the Rodney was being broken up in Scotland, and the Nelson was picked as a target for bombing practice. Scots were fitting out the 75-footer Clupea with hydrographic and sonic equipment for "herring research." The problem was to discover, if possible, why winter shoals of herring virtually stopped coming to the Firth of Forth some four years ago. Other Scots fixed earnest attention on the new excavations of Roman remains at Loudoun Hill, Ayrshire, believed to date from the reign of the Flavian emperors some 1,900 years ago.

In The Netherlands, people were busy packing cheeses and electrical equipment, and getting ready for the international tulip festival at Amsterdam this month. The rebuilding of Rotterdam proceeded slowly; harbor reconstruction was almost 50% complete. In Italy the trains were running at nearly prewar speeds again. Shops displayed (amidst some of the dingiest poverty in Western Europe) an abundance of fine shoes, silks and glassware. The streets of Rome seemed full of glittering new cars. In Naples, Genoa and almost everywhere else in the harbors of Western Europe, cranes clanked away unloading incoming supplies, including those paid for by U.S. interim aid.

"From what you know about the Marshall Plan, are you generally favorable to it, generally against it, or haven't you made up your mind about it yet?"

Not all Europeans who are suspicious of the Marshall Plan--or actively hostile --are card-holding Commies. Some are Communist dupes who find it easier to accept the Kremlin's line: "a plan for the enslavement of the peoples of working Europe by the American imperialists." Others, like British Presslord Beaverbrook's Daily Express, have a different objection. They believe that their countries: 1) can recover through their own efforts from here on; 2) must avoid becoming "dependencies" of the U.S. Said a retailer near London, borrowing a Daily Express theme: "We were wrong in the first place to accept the [$3,750,000,000] loan. It made us live artificially, beyond our means, while you profited over there. Now we've got to begin fighting on our own feet." Nevertheless, among Europeans who have heard of the Marshall Plan at all,* a substantial majority, of course, endorse it.

For the Plan Against Plan Undecided

Britain 55% 15% 30%

France 63 15 22

Sweden 50 8 42

Switzerland 57 4 39

Italy 65 14 21

U.S. Zone 75 3 22

To the average Western European, the Marshall Plan is rather welcome evidence that the U.S. is not at the moment pulling out of Europe. Beyond that conclusion, Europeans find U.S. intentions obscure. Neither the words of Washington nor the explanations of their own governments have persuaded most Europeans, for example, that Marshall Plan aid is not basically just another loan--that is supposed to be paid back some day, with interest. How poorly U.S. aid has been described abroad is clear from the fact that 62% of the Frenchmen interviewed, and 61% of the Britons, think that ERP is fundamentally a loan. Italians are either much better informed or temperamentally more sanguine: only 25% of them think that the aid has to be paid back.

What were the U.S. motives in giving aid to Europe? To halt Communism is the reason most often given. Few Europeans believe that the U.S. is acting out of pure altruism. Nor do many Europeans believe the Communist line that the Marshall Plan is primarily intended to impose U.S. capitalism in Europe or to enable the U.S. to get rid of its goods in order to escape a depression. Frenchmen are more ready than other Europeans to believe the latter motive; even so, the 26% of Frenchmen who think the U.S. is trying to get rid of its goods are not as high a percentage as the Communist vote in recent elections.

What about long-range expectations? Will the U.S. "give Europe all the help she really needs" in the next few years? Not as Europeans see it. Most predict that the U.S. will give "some" but not enough assistance:

U.S. WILL*

Give All Help Give Some Help Withdraw Support

Britain 17% 63% 6%

France 13 44 10

Sweden 16 58 3

Switzerland 12 61 4

Italy 23 41 8

U.S. Zone 31 53 4

BUT IF THE FUTURE was, after all, rather inscrutable, Western Europeans could make the best of the tangible present. Football fever gripped Paris. Fifty thousand jammed into the Colombes Stadium, outside the city, to watch Lille and the Paris Racing Club play to a 3 to 3 tie. "To hell with politics!" shouted French Dramatist Jean de Beer, one of the watchers. "This is the kind of thing we live for." Crowds at the Auteuil race track were not so elegant as before the war (definitely fewer grey toppers), but just as large.

In Britain, crowds of 60,000 to 70,000 watched the last games of the waning football season; millions more sat home and placed bets in the football pools. One lucky Londoner won -L-55,000, which, as the Daily Graphic pointed out, was almost exactly what the late Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb) left in his will. There was a public outcry because the Quantock Hunt (staghounds) had been allowed petrol rations of 7 1/2 gallons for each deer bagged. But British huntsmen were scheduling more than 100 chases between Easter and the end of April. In Bavaria, the horse-racing season opened; some 100,000 racegoers bet a total of 1 1/2 million marks the first day. "Never before in the history of Bavarian racing," said a pleased German, "has so much money been spent."

Wherever possible, city dwellers jogged off on weekends. On Annunciation Day 5,000 Swedes took excursion boats across the Sound to Copenhagen. British railways ran 1,500 extra trains for Easter holiday traffic--last year the only extra trains had been for late-shift workers. Londoners picnicked on Hampstead Heath; a short distance from town ten carnival shows were running at once, complete with carousels and gypsy sideshows. Frenchmen made for the country too. Pierre Chander, who works at the War Ministry, took his family to Fontainebleau. They visited the chateau and went for walks in the forest. Back at work with a sunburned nose, Chander said: "C,a me donne du courage. Now I can put in a good week's work."

Others got their courage at home. Paris nightclubs were doing not too badly despite the high prices. At the swank Champs Elysees cabaret, Les Ambassadeurs, Warbler Edith Piaf, just back from a successful trip to the U.S., was singing, to great applause, Je Vois la Vie en Rose. Rose-colored glasses helped. Still others preferred the smaller places, like "Jimmy's" in Montparnasse or the one in the Rue des Carmes, in the Latin Quarter, where they could hear the new French jazz find, Claude Luter (TIME, March 8). Farces and comedies were doing well. Paris' latest hit was a 40-year-old farce called Occupe-toi d'Amelie, in which, during a good part of the second act, the male and female leads deliver their lines from bed. For Producer-Director Jean-Louis Barrault, the play was a change of pace; last year he had produced a stage version of Franz Kafka's symbolic novel, The Trial.

In Stockholm, The Best Years of Our Lives was in its fifth month. The Danes had run so low on dollars that they were not buying many U.S. films at the moment, but Copenhagen ballet fans could watch Massine in An der Schonen Blauen Donau, and the legitimate theater was prosperous. Porgy and Bess was in its fourth year; there were productions of Medea (Euripides) and The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams). Before the show, the well-heeled Copenhagener could go to restaurants like the Skandia and have a five-course meal topped with Friesenborg Gorgonzola bathed in French brandy and Jamaica rum. The young set in Sweden were dancing to the Too Fat Polka and Across the Alley from the Alamo. Bebop was catching on: Dizzy Gillespie's American band had been in town.

But this spring, even in Scandinavia, the young set were thinking about more than bebop. In Sweden, hardly a day passed without the arrival of refugees from Finland--people who had managed to cross the long common frontier. Norway extended the training period for army conscripts from nine months to twelve; Denmark cut military leaves and doubled the guard around munitions depots. Stockholm announced a plan to increase by 50% Sweden's force of fighter planes, with emphasis on jets. In Western Europe, people wondered where security might be found. In U.N.?

"From what you know of the U.N. so far, do you think it has a good chance, only a fair chance, or a poor chance of being able to maintain world peace?"*

Good Chance Fair Chance Poor Chance Undecided

Britain 16% 34% 43% 7%

France 4 39 40 17

Sweden 7 32 48 13

Switzerland 6 46 34 14

Italy 8 17 66 9

U.S. Zone 15 20 58 7

Western Europeans nursed no great hope that U.N. would be able to maintain peace. What else was there? One other idea that rank-&-file Europeans turned over in their minds now was Western European Union. So far, to the average man, the words were little more than a label; fewer people had heard the phrase than had heard, for example, of U.N. or the Marshall Plan. But Western Europe liked the sound of Western Union.

"Generally speaking, are you in favor of the idea of a Western European Union, against the idea, or haven't you made up your mind about it yet?"*

In Favor Against Undecided

Britain 66% 10% 24%

France 64 21 15

Sweden 33 23 44

Switzerland 49 21 30

Italy 50 11 39

U.S. Zone 59 3 38

The meaning of such figures could be pressed too far. For instance, the fact that only 11% of Italians replying to the question were against Western Union did not mean that the Reds were going to be snowed under in the April 18 elections. Only slightly more than half of the Italian electorate has heard about Western Union; most who have are in the upper-and middle-income groups. Moreover, it has been made no great issue in the Italian election campaign. Yet the survey does show, at the very least, that a popular basis for closer union exists today.

What if Western Union involves a common currency? The mutual abolition of tariffs? The free movement of workers from one country to another, as jobs may be available? In the survey, a majority of Europeans with opinions declare that they are ready for such limitations on national sovereignty. Enthusiasm varies, country by country, on these points: Frenchmen (whose tradition is to stay at home) are not quite so willing to open the doors to migrant foreign labor as Italians (whose tradition includes working abroad). Britons are not so anxious to merge the pound sterling with continental currencies; they are reluctant to see a Western Union army in which British troops would have to serve under non-British commanders. Some fear what removal of tariffs just now would do to their markets or their jobs.

However, since history, in the spring of '48, was not putting its challenge to the West with the somewhat artificial simplicity of a questionnaire, some theoretically thorny questions might not have to be answered for a while. Or time might make them easier to answer. Said a Frenchman, in angry pessimism: "As things are now, a Russian army could be in Paris within eight days. . . . What really counts, besides the Marshall Plan, are the Italian elections. . . ."

THAT COULD BE SAID, and said again; yet nobody could keep his mind on the Marshall Plan and the Italian elections all the time. There were other preoccupying concerns.

In Britain, birdwatchers reported that several chiffchaffs had been sighted in the southern counties. Sir John Anderson, until recently chairman of the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy, warned the House of Commons to plan now for civilian defense in an atomic war. Shop counters were piled high with oranges and lemons (the British had foresightedly cleared the bulk of the Palestine citrus crops before beginning troop withdrawals). Fruits and vegetables were arriving from South Africa. But the average Briton was still plagued with shortages. He was limited to a shillingsworth of meat (tuppence of it in corned beef), and fats and soap were hard to find. The current music-hall gag on the subject: "The soap ration doesn't worry me--with the food I get I ain't got the strength to wash." To make up for the shortage of clothing coupons, film studios rented wedding dresses from their costume racks. Thus, this spring, Eileen Dickerson of Hornsey Road, London, was married in a costume first worn by Vivien Leigh in Anna Karenina.

Miracles were being reported all over Italy. Despite discouragement by Church authorities, 60,000 pilgrims poured into Assisi to be cured by the "breathing" Madonna atop the cathedral. Communists, scenting propaganda, countered with reports of another miracle: a statue of Garibaldi had dismounted from its horse, smoked a cigar and inquired about Vatican scandals. In Rome, the weather was fitful. Said one overcoated man: "It seems warm when the sun is up, but as soon as you walk into the shade the cold air catches you like a knife."

Crowds thronged to see a film on the Pope's anti-war activities. Many were attracted by the title: War Against War. Other crowds saw Garbo's Ninotchka, newly released in Italy; it gave them a chance to laugh, briefly, at Communism. In Naples, the minstrels were singing a new one:

Some wish me to vote for the right,

Some wish me to vote for the left.

Why is it both are unaware

That I have teeth in my head--

Need food to bite on?

Have lips that want to sing?

What a world!

In Dublin, prominent citizens, including Sean MacBride, Eire's new Foreign Minister, founded the Association of Civil Liberties to "educate the public on the rights of the individual." To be sure, the first meeting almost broke up in disorder when one man asked, "By what authority does the association claim the right to educate others?" But Irishmen still thought the association was a good idea. The sponsors felt that human rights and freedoms could not be taken for granted; they were worth thinking about. Perhaps it was as much worth doing as anything else that preoccupied people this spring.

What were the most important freedoms? In the west of Europe people differed somewhat in the answers they gave to that question. But the answers showed, essentially, how much people thought alike.

"Which two [freedoms] do you think it is most important to have? 1) The right to say or write what one believes without fear of punishment? 2) The right to work at any job one chooses? 3) Protection from unreasonable interference by police? 4) The right to vote in a fair and free election to decide who shall govern the country? 5) The right to private ownership of business?"

FREEDOM*

Speech Vote Job Business Police

Britain 54% 58% 46% 25% 10%

France 63 37 29 30 18

Sweden 52 75 32 16 10

Switzerland 55 41 32 18 12

Italy 60 53 47 19 9

U.S. Zone 55 51 41 25 8

The subject of freedom was not academic. In these and other countries of the West it was still possible for ordinary men and women to discuss freedom out loud. TIME planned to include one other European country in the survey, but at the last moment it turned out to be impossible to ask such questions in Czechoslovakia this spring.

*Conducted for TIME, under the supervision of Elmo Roper, by local survey organizations in Britain, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy. U.S. military government authorities made available the results of a comparable survey in the U.S. Zone of Germany.

*As compared with 86% of U.S. adults who have heard of the Marshall Plan (according to a current Roper Survey), the international survey found the following numbers familiar with the plan abroad: France, 90%; Sweden, 85%; Britain and Switzerland, 80%; Italy, 74%; U.S. Zone of Germany, 69%.

* "Undecideds" (omitted from this table) ranged from 12% in the U.S. Zone to 33% in France.

*Put only to those who had heard of U.N. (from 94% in Sweden to 49% in Germany).

*In the British and French surveys, the question was put only to persons who had heard of Western Union. This may partially explain the lower number of "undecideds" in those countries.

*Totals exceed 100% since those interviewed in the survey were invited to make two choices. Some were undecided or gave no answer. Their number: Britain, 2%; France, 12%; Switzerland, 20%; Italy, 4%; U.S. Zone of Germany, 10%.

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