When the Labor government could stand it least, the weather joined with a complex group of economic factors to give England its greatest coal shortage in history. While Britain shivered and slowed down to a case of industrial frost-bite, her leaders joined with peace-planners everywhere in speculation over just what was the matter with the British economy. At the heart the problem was the disturbing possibility of the periodic exhaustion of British resources and morale which could affect the economy of all of western Europe.

Americans must not allow animus over British colonial failures to suggest an attitude of plague-on-your-house in the case of the present crisis. The peace of Europe is too much intertwined with the productive capacity of the British Isles for Americans to be unconcerned when this industrial potential fritters away in the face of a winter storm. If the British cannot maintain their internal living-standard, British commitments everywhere must be sealed down proportionately, and the resulting vacuum must be filled according to the power line-up of 1947, with American troops and equipment. The withdrawal of British forces from Palestine and Greece would not bring British prestige crumbling down around the Attlee government as quickly as would a withdrawal from the delicate German balance, or from the Indian turmoil. At these key points, British commitments are Allied commitments, and the American taxpayer stands to lose directly in the current Battle of the Blizzard.

But more fundamentally, Europe is losing its last chance at middle-of-the-road economic remedies if English mines continue to send spasms of paralysis through British industry. Democratic moderates in France and the Low Countries has looked to a flow of consumers goods from these factories to clothe and comfort their shabbily-dressed millions while at the same time the export of processed foods to England was to be balanced by this trade. To Germans the British dimout meant that the industrial rehabilitation of their country must await stimulus from the east, since Newcastle can scarcely afford coals for its own mills, much less for export.

Even those who enjoy the picture of John Bull freezing within the Gothic confines of his Empire should be able to discern American responsibilities in the British crisis. As an expedient, President Truman's offer of coal should be transmitted again, this time coupled with promises of equal aid to the continent so that Mr. Clement Attlee will not be forced to decline the offer in face of greater need elsewhere. And if western Europe can be bound into an economic self-sufficiency only by efficient English production, the Welsh and Sussex mines must be brought out of the 19th century. A further British loan, according to Washington pollsters, might be acceptable to Congress if the British matched this helping hand with a little self-help in the form of repatriating some of the 100,000 working men who daily contradict British need by their presence in Palestine. With London finally squaring up to the realities of its 1947 Empire, the U. S. State Department might be willing to share the burden of the Palestine problem and a Congress that is already talking Lend-Lease would be a great deal more amenable to renewed grants of American industrial reserves and know-how-but only if the limits of the Empire are sharply re-defined.

When the blizzard clears in south England, all of western Europe will look to the British cabinet for a way out of national despair. The United States can provide modern techniques and aid, and Europe the markets, but only Downing Street can lend the initial impetus that will bring the British lion in off the streets.