WESTERN EUROPE: The Laggards

"Look at world production curves and compare them. In the U.S., industrial production has increased 8% in two years. In Europe, 1%. This figure does not include Germany, purposely. It has increased 13%. Let's look at the Soviet bloc. What do we see? A continued development."

The speaker: France's Robert Marjolin, secretary general of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the European clearinghouse to deal with U.S. economic aid. His worry: that unless Western Europe overhauls its economic thinking it will never catch up.

Western Europe's chief problem, he said last week, is no longer the dollar shortage. The lags in expansion and restrictions on trade are what most ails it. "The enemy is protectionism in all its forms," said he. In what is rare talk for a Frenchman, he denounced Europe's own high tariffs as "anachronistic and anti-economic."

"In the West as well as in the East, the forces grow," warned Marjolin. "The world balance changes while Europe lags behind." It is true, he added, that Russia expands without liberty and with forced labor. "We can pity the men, denounce the methods, but let us not forget that tomorrow we must reckon with Soviet economic power."