From Our Own Correspondents ANTWERP.
All last week a squad of 50 policemen and inspectors belonging to the Judicial Police Department have ruthlessly searched residences, seized papers and documents, operated arrests and shadowed peaceable citizens and private houses.
The object is to ascertain whether the Rexist Movement is a military movement or a militarised movement, ' A further object is to find out if there is any collusion between the Rexist Guards and the ex-Combatant Rexists with the officers on active service in the Belgian Army.
The judicial investigation will drag on for months, but, note, that in the meantime the Municipal elections will have been fought and, probably, greatly to the prejudice of the Rexist Party; for many a Rexistminded patriotic Belgian is likely to succumb on polling day to the suggestion that the Rexists are plotting against the State.
Why Now?
La Nation Belge, the important Brussels Independent Catholic daily, writes: " There never has been any secret about the existence of the Rexists. As to the existence of the Rexist Guards, they have been a prominent public feature ever since M. Degrelle started his first meetings.
So now we ask why, if the laws have been infringed, have the authorities withheld their prosecution until the very eve of the General Communal Elections?"
The importance of these municipal elections is that the fate of the Catholic Schools and religious instruction hangs thereon.
Union on the lines of the Anti-Marxist Bloc as at Malines—where as I stated last week all elements, Catholic, Rexist, National Flemings, Democrats (Christian), have united in one electoral list on Communal grounds--is an ideal method to
(Continued at foot of next column.)