UNEASY EUROPE—WHAT DOES THE YEAR HOLD?

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25389, 12 January 1948, Page 6

UNEASY EUROPE—WHAT DOES THE YEAR HOLD?

LONDON MISCELLANY

(Specially Written for "The Press.”) (By S. G. BROOKES.]

London, December 29.—A real sense of unease is abroad in Europe as the New Year comes in. The slow processes of the uncertain United States legislature are keeping Western Europe in suspense about the supply of economic ammunition for a battle which is on already—a battle with want and poverty, profiteering, bjack marketeering, the inflation of money, and the inflation, if so it may be called, of political confusion. Meanwhile the Marshall Plan hangs on the American debate. While the counterattack waits to be munitioned, the political theory of the East is in full drive against the islands of western thought inside its sphere of influence. Communism has already, to all intents and purposes, liquidated the individual representation of western thought in the countries on the other side of the Berlin Line. Consolidated in all the Balkan countries except Greece, Communism has now made it the declared policy of Bulgaria, Jogoslavia, and, it must be presumed, Russia, to support and encourage the Communists in Greece in their attempt to oust their Government by force. This year may be the year in which the rival ideologies come, at some point, to a decision. If Western Europe retains any power of recovery, this is the year in which that recovery must begin. Until we see which way the economic and political forces decisively pull, we are uneasy. There are too many people hungry and thinly clothed; too many who could so easily be persuaded to put down the pick and shovel and pick up the brickbat. Trouble is not only the parent of economic chaos; it is also the offspring. Christinas Tree Darkened at Midnight The mood of the British people is never easy to judge, and now is less easy than at most times. There is a certain amount of hangover in the atmosphere. The reason for some of this was obvious enough on Christmas Eve and on the night of Boxing Day—and in the Magistrates’ Courts the next day. The English Christmas is mainly spent at home, and most of the people spent their Christmas as merrily as might be inside their own walls, where housewives performed miracles of supply and- preparation, and where everyone, with digestions in poor practice for feasting, for once ate too much. But even at such times the gregarious instincts of the city people of England bring them out to make crowds and seek fellowship. Your correspondent had the impression that the. gaiety was a Mttle forced and the drinking forced, too, so that the drunkenness was more and the geniality less than he can remember in this country. But the real mood of the country, if it can be defined, comes from a general feeling that Christmas this season was only an interlude between the hard year gone and the hard year to come. If anything was typical of the time, it was the Christmas tree in Trafalgar square, presented by Norway. The coloured lights were extinguished at midnight, for an estimated saving, over the week, of rather less than £l. To this correspondent, that seemed

quite incongruous. The national debt, after all, is about £5,000,000,000. One bag of coal might have been spared. In Trafalgar square on Christmas Eve, after midnight, people came to see the Christmas tree, and it was only a tree, unlit. The scene of to many great celebrations was dark and damp. A few knots of people stood silently, waiting, it might be, for the magic that could not come. So they went home, and the Ministry of Works saved half-a-crown. Selling is Harder The terms of trade are not improving. Continued rises in prices forgoods bought oversea disturb the calculations of the target planners. The Board of Trade index of import prices has levelled off, a little, but it rose between August and November from 254 to 259. (Base, 1938: 100.) British export prices rose in the same period from 234 to 240. Export prices therefore gained a point, not much; but the rise is already beginning to lend force to the argument proposed last year by the “Economist,” that in certain circumstances favourable terms of trade could be dangerous. As British prices rise, the export market weakens. British coal has just gone up by 2s 6d a ton, so that the pithead price in Britain is about 465. The Coal Board negotiates on commercial terms with oversea customers but obviously cannot reduce the price much, if at all, because that would mean adding the cost of a price subsidy to the already high cost of coal production here. Prices will be Britain’s next big problem. In all lines of export goods they increasingly reflect inflation and make buyers nervous. This puts the export target in danger and with it the prospect of reaching a trade balance. Those who pay to the problem of oversea balances the attention the Ministry of Works paid to the cost of Christmas illuminations found it a salutary thought that most of the material for the festivities was bought on credit, and that the remaining credit win barely—the fit word —provide the austere necessities of 1948. Old Horse, Oldest Man Two cases of longevity have appeared in the news this week. One of Tschiffely’s horses, which carried him 14.000 miles from Buenos Aires to Washing* ton in a two-and-a-half-year journey which began in 1925, has died at the age of 38. As this long and adventurous life came to an end. “The Times” discovered that an even longer life was coming to record-breaking maturity. Veil Sahiboglu, a Turk, is 139 years old. “The Times” comments on Veli’s good fortune in taking over the position of oldest man at a comparatively early age. His predecessor, also a Turk, was Zaro Aga, who died at the age of 160. Discountenancing sceptical suggestions that Veli’s age cannot be proved, “The Times” observes that it would be just as easy to prove him older. Veli will probably survive the sceptics and live on peacefully; but it is a pity he could not be persuaded to walk a few thousand miles across Europe or America, and thus provide absolute proof that man is superior to the horse. In more serious matters, this proof seems sadly lacking.