EUROPE: Vocabulary Wanted

Britain's general election and France's cantonal elections had shown how the yeast of suffering and liberation had leavened men's minds. Last week:

¶ In Norway's national election the left-of-center Labor Party, led by rugged, rocklike Einar Gerhardsen, returned to power with 77 seats in the 150-seat Storting. With a handful of results still to come, Labor was sure of an absolute majority for its intensified prewar program of a planned economy and socialized public utilities. The rightist and center parties lost ground. Communists scored the biggest gain: from nil to ten seats.

¶ Czechoslovakia's Communists made a big showing, which proved the prominence of Communist strength in the Government, though not necessarily among the people.

¶ Budapest voters had seemingly decided to turn right, despite the presence of the Red Army. In the Budapest municipal elections the non-socialist Small Holders' Party, which advocated breaking up Hungary's large estates into small privately owned holdings, won control of the City Council with 122 seats against 104 for the Communist-Social Democrat coalition. Much of its support came from people eager to vote for the only well-organized non-Communist party. The Small Holders' leader, Zoltan Tildy, jubilantly predicted that in the national election next month all Hungary would follow the capital.

So far, Continental trends were obscure. The dominant surge was still toward what used to be "the left." But Europe, with all the world, needed a new political vocabulary. Yesterday's "right" was all but dead; the socialist "left" looked very much like 1945's center.