Brussels, Apr. 2.
General elections for the constitution of a Parliament compossd of 202 Deputies and 101 Senators took place throughout Belgium today. The vote ended at 1.00 pin., but the results will not be known before Monday evening at the earliest owing to the complicated system of ballot.
The electoral campaign and the election itself took place amid general cairn. ' Although a bitter electoral fight was expected over the Dr. Adrian Maertens problem, the recent events in Czechoslovakia calmed down all differences and resulted in the reinforcement of national sentiment in the country.
Even the extremist Flemish Nationalist Party rallied to the ideal of national unity, and issued a manifesto at the eleventh hour stressing that the Party would be in favour of defending the country against any attack by Herr Hitler.
With regard to the elections themselves, it is expected that the Communists will gain a few seats at the expense of the Socialists who were responsible for the nomination of Dr. Maertens to the Flemish Royal Academy of Medecine.
The Catholics should fulfil expectations by winning several seats from the pro-Fascist "Rexist Party", which is suffering from internal differences. This leads to the belief that the Catholics will once again resume their position of strongest party in Parliament.
The Liberals are likely to gain half a dozen seats owing to the fact that they had always opposed the appointment of Dr. Maertens. The Flemish Nationalists are expected to lose out a little.
However, it is stressed that the resignation' of Dr. Maertens from the Academy has greatly based the political situation—Havas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.