NOT since the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler rallied the German people with his guttural call for Ruhe und Ordnung, has Western Europe been so preoccupied with the problem of law and order. This fact is curious in itself, since Europe is suffering from none of the specific agonies that are presently afflicting the U.S. There is no angry debate over Viet Nam to polarize European populations, no comparable student concern with the draft, no race problem of remotely similar scope.
Yet Europe, like the U.S., is in the throes of a "second industrial revolution" that has led to an increasingly technological and depersonalized society. Students have balked at the overcrowded, understaffed, bureaucratic quality of university life. For a time they were joined in France by blue-collar workers seeking higher wages. Students and workers are still demonstrating regularly all over the Continent, but not together: their short-lived alliance is dead. As in the U.S., worker resentment of long-haired, privileged students has often led to clashes between the two groups. In fact, the U.S. example may have had much to do with the rise of the law-and-order phenomenon in Europe—just as it did with the contagious spread of discontent and violence.
Amnesty Bill. Oddly enough, the European nations least affected seem to be the ones with recent totalitarian pasts —Germany and Italy. Last fall the West Germans elected a Socialist government and gave a mere 4.3% of the vote to the right-wing National Democratic Party, which advocated "security through law and order." Franz-Josef Strauss, a leader of the opposition Christian Democrats, has delighted audiences in his native Bavaria by attacking the "animal students," and he has been heard to observe that European politicians have a lot to learn from Spiro Agnew. But outside conservative Bavaria, Strauss's approach has met with little success. Another measure of the country's relaxed approach to the issue is the fact that West Germany's Bundesrat only lasl week gave final approval to a new law aimed at preventing the police from restricting demonstrations. The law prohibits random arrests of people merely for being present at a violent demonstration; only those directly involved in violent actions will be subject to imprisonment.
In Italy, despite a certain nostalgia for the days of Benito Mussolini (TIME, May 4), few would exchange the dishevelment of parliamentary democracy for the discipline of the Fascist era. Instead of advocating repressive new laws during Italy's current period of unrest, Premier Mariano Rumor's government is preparing an amnesty bill that will permit the dropping of charges against hundreds of demonstrators arrested in recent months. "We accept controversy," said Rumor, "but we will not permit democracy itself to be attacked."