By Accident

The county-sized Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (pop. 315,000; area, 1,000 sq. mi.) is the smallest member of NATO, of the European Common Market and of the United Nations. But in some matters, little Luxembourg looms big. It is the tenth largest steel-producing country in the world; its citizens are the most prosperous in Europe, and so fond of its own frothy beer and heavy dumplings that the Germans market corsets in Luxembourg that are outsized even by German standards. And, according to a U.N. report, Luxembourg's drivers have the highest automobile accident rate in the world.

In an attempt to remove the bad-driving stigma from Luxembourg's good name, the coalition government last year pushed through a seemingly routine law requiring all of the grand duchy's drivers to undergo a yearly checkup on their cars, at their own expense ($4). It did not sit well. Opposition Leader Eugene Schaus charged that one firm had tried to bribe the Ministry of Transport to get the contract. Spurning the bribe, the minister eliminated the firm from the list of candidates. Aha, said Schaus, but had he reported the bribe attempt within six days, as required by law? In the resultant fuss, the government toppled and a general election was called.

Schaus's party won, and last week, when the new government was formed, the furor over the accidents produced a major casualty. Portly, white-haired Joseph Bech, 72—a Christian Socialist who has been Foreign Minister for the past 33 years and a familiar florid figure at nearly every international conference since League of Nations days, in the company of the famed from Lloyd George to Macmillan—lost his job. The new Foreign Minister: Eugene Schaus.