INTERNATIONAL: Educational Is the Word

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(See front cover)

With his bags all packed and his steamer passage to the U. S. engaged, Premier Paul van Zeeland of Belgium last week pushed through his Parliament's lower house a bill granting amnesty to those Flemish separatists still in jail or suffering loss of civic rights as a result of negotiating with the enemy during the German occupation.

The Flemish-speaking Belgians who demand separation from the rest of their tiny country are a pain in the neck to most Belgian politicians. The fact that Premier van Zeeland has determined to make peace with them has considerable bearing on his visit to the U. S. and the reasons for it.

"An amnesty is not rehabilitation," he explained last week, "and not a pardon. It merely means to forget the past and let bygones be bygones."

Several weeks ago at a White House press conference, newshawks brought up the subject of Premier van Zeeland and his visit to the U. S. President Roosevelt exhibited an expression of bewildered innocence that would have done credit to Lillian Gish.

"As far as I know," said he, "Mr. van Zeeland is simply coming to this country to get a degree from Princeton. Of course if he should come to Washington, I would be very glad to see him." Not for an instant did Washington wiseacres believe it was as simple as all that. They are firmly convinced not only that Premier van Zeeland has an ulterior motive in coming to the U. S. to get his honorary degree from Princeton, but that President Roosevelt is responsible for bringing him. Vaguely, but with conviction, the wiseacres talk about the Oslo Group.

Oslo Group. Because the Scandinavian nations speak nearly the same language, share the same royal family and were most ardently bound to neutrality during the War, they formed instinctively a tight little group that talked and voted alike during the early years of the League of Nations. Instinctively Baltic Finland joined them and also the Low Countries, Belgium, The Netherlands, minuscule Luxembourg. Nothing very practical was done about this group until December 1930, when delegates of all except Finland met in Oslo, Norway to try nothing more elaborate than a mutual tariff agreement. Main trouble was that the best individual customers of all these countries were Germany and Britain, no parties to the original Oslo Convention. When the grand World Economic Conference fizzled out in 1933, the Oslo Convention as an actual agreement was virtually forgotten. But because all the Oslo countries save Belgium were bound by no military alliances and pledged to neutrality in any coming war, the Oslo Group continued voting and thinking alike at international conferences. During the Ethiopian crisis in particular they cooperated with Finland and Switzerland, became known as "The League's Conscience."