RIVAL LEADERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 9

RIVAL LEADERS

Until he became Prime Minister of Belgium in April, 1935, the name of M. Paul van Zeeland was practically unknown to the general public abroad. M. van Zeeland is primarily an economist. Relatively new in politics, he is already, at 44, a world figure in banking circles. His experience in financial matters, so far from being restricted to Belgium, has extended to many countries. Returning to Belgium after the war, he entered the National Bank (the Belgian equivalent of the Bank of England or the Bank of France) and represented his coun'cry at the Geneva International Economic Conference. Already he was acquiring a reputation as an expert on post-war financial problems, and was soon sent to Czechoslovakia on a special banking mission. This he accomplished so successfully that he was made secretary of the National Bank, and, after another equally successful mission to Greece, he became one of the active heads of the bank, -when only 33 years old, and after only four years' direct association with the national institution. In this position he was one of the youngest representatives to the conference which framed the constitution of the Bank of International Settlements at Basle, Switzerland. Although a member of the rather conservative Roman Catholic Party in Belgium, M. van Zeeland has decided "socialising" ideas of his own. In 1931, he made a special tour of Soviet' Russia, studying the elements of the famous Five-Year Plan, afterwards writing an authoritative book on the subject. Later in the same year he travelled to Cairo as an independent financial adviser to the Egyptian Government. Turning once more from East to West, he again visited the United States and became an ardent —if eclectic—admirer of President Roosevelt and the American ,"New Deal." His close contacts at this time J with the President's "Brain Trust" are doubtless responsible for the presence in his own Cabinet of many professors of political economy. , Belgium's political sky became suddenly changed early last year. Under the leadership of M. Leon Degrelle, a new party, Rex, as a result of the 1936 elections, was placed on the map with 21 seats out of the.2o2 which constitute the Chamber. M. Degrelle, who is only 30 years of age, is a man of action. He was too exuberant to sit quietly under the stern eyes of professors at Louvain University, where he had been sent. He wanted to write and to travel. The world, or parts of it, he judged, needed reforming, and after a visit to Mexico he advised the Catholics there to take drastic action against President Calles, in whom he saw responsibility for religious persecution. Back in Belgium, Degrelle began to take great interest in home politics, while using his business acumen to build up a small fortune. He had great faith in the power of the Press for any crusade,.and he launched a number of weekly papers, one of which, "Rex," he adopted as the organ of the party which he was to found. Degrell probed into the private as well as the public life of politicians of the old .brigade, and was soon denouncing in his Press and at extremely wellattended meetings in all parts of the country what he alleges to be the scandalous collusion of politicians and bankers, particularly as it affected the Catholic Party. He has not spared even the National Bank of Belgium nor its Governor, and action after action for libel has been started against him. For his party badge Degrelle chose a broom, signifying that he intended to sweep away Les Pourris—the "rotten old gang." As time went on, and despite the epithets of "peacock," "false, god," "clown," and so on bestowed on him by Catholics, Liberals, and Socialists alike, Degrelle brought to the surface and intensified the discontent, distrust, and, in many cases, disgust of a large section of the public, especially the younger element, for the old parties and the old Parliamentary regime. He respects neither the grey hairs of the professional politician nor the mitre of the bishop. Although admiring both Mussolini and Hitler, Degrelle is neither Fascist nor Nazi. What he says he desires is "A clean Belgium for the Belgians." At the same time, it is stated, he has many Hitlerian mannerisms, particularly ip. the way he addresses a crowd.