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Premier van Zeeland adopted and succeeded in maintaining a policy of keeping internal Belgian prices near to where they were when the belga was devalued, thus cutting by 28% the external prices at which Belgian industry was able to offer its products and stimulating trade which sharply reduced Belgian unemployment. In France the immediate rise of internal prices, as soon as the franc was devalued, left French industry to stagnate, unable to meet competitive prices abroad. And such reduction of employment as France obtained by legislating shorter hours made her trade position still worse, since it increased French production costs, upping both internal and external prices. This year, at the time of Premier van Zeeland's visit to President Roosevelt (TIME, July 5), most commentators agreed that Belgian economy, having in the main been managed understandingly by an economist rather than run by politicians (there were, of course, Belgian leaders of both the Catholic and Socialist parties in the van Zeeland Cabinet) had made just about the best recovery showing in Europe. This, however, did not save van Zeeland.
Belgium's loose Nazi movement, the Rexists, began as avowedly Catholic— their Rex being the Savior Christus Rex. Handsome as a cinema hero and leather-lunged, Rexist Leader Léon Degrelle daringly insinuated that King Leopold was behind him until His Majesty discreetly punctured such rumors. Degrelle also openly claimed the Catholic Church was behind him, was disavowed by a letter from the Archbishop of Malines. When Degrelle forced a by-election last spring this challenge was accepted by Premier van Zeeland who ran as a simple candidate for the Chamber of Deputies against Rexist Degrelle and beat him.
The Rexist retort to this was to commence ferreting through every organization with which Professor van Zeeland had ever been connected and in the National Bank of Belgium of which he had been vice governor they found something. The statutes of the bank had been so drawn, long before van Zeeland's time, that its officials participated in a pool of earnings so arranged that to an ordinary Belgian eye it is clear enough that at least some of the money which went to officials and former officials, including van Zeeland, should instead have gone into the public treasury. The Chamber by a vote of 130-to-34 vindicated Premier van Zeeland while demanding that the statutes of the bank be revised (TIME, Sept. 20). However, in the State investigation now proceeding van Zeeland will have to appear, like other former officials of the National Bank, before a magistrate to be examined "like a criminal!" (according to the Rexists' jubilating press). Professor van Zeeland, feeling that the Premier of Belgium, although already vindicated, could not maintain the dignity of that great office while being examined in court, handed his resignation to King Leopold.