THE TABLET. December 15th, 1951.

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

VOL. 198, No. 5821

LONDON, DECEMBER 15th, 1951

NINEPENCE

FOUNDED IN 1840

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

REMAINING CHANCES Can the Government Rescue the National Economy ? THE POSITION OF ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC Small Sign of Improved Conditions for the Church in Yugoslavia

THE FALAHEEN OF THE NILE VALLEY The Raw Material of Political Exploitation. By Charles P . Brown

A GLASGOW ENQUIRY A Recent Survey among the Young. By Colm Brogan THE LAST VICTORIAN TRIBUTE TO TURNER The Autobiography of Sir Norman Angell By Robert Sencourt

M. SPAAK RESIGNS M R. CHURCHILL, Mr. Eden, and the British Cabinet generally, can hardly be feeling very happy or proud of themselves at the way this year’s session of the Council of Europe has ended at Strasbourg. Neither Mr. Churchill nor Mr. Eden put in even a brief appearance, though so many other European statesmen did, and when dramatically, on the last day, M. Spaak resigned the Presidency, with a vehement outburst of mortification and premonitions, his striking phrases were primarily directed towards this country for showing what he termed “the wisdom of death” and for missing great chances that will not recur—missing them through being over-careful, not understanding that in this preoccupation with the minute investigation of every phrase and every resolution the wood was being lost to sight for the trees.

Pleven’s success were exactly the same cogent reasons that ought at Strasbourg to have led to more progress. No sacrifice, said M. Reynaud, would be too great to prevent the separation of Europe from America, and if America has been persuaded to defend the whole of Western Europe, and not only the line of the Pyrenees, it was because General Eisenhower had said that France was determined to unify Europe. This French decision may prove of the greatest value and importance in Washington, for the Schuman Plan is the chief positive thing to which General Eisenhower can point. It is a project really rich in military and economic significance, because a merging of French and German industry does create a great obstacle in the path of any German nationalists who should dream of creating a national army to pursue strictly national policy. The Functional Approach

Behind M. Spaak’s urgency is the very real and important truth that time is now running rather rapidly against us. If the Germans do not find a Western Europe to which they can join themselves, they will be thrown back on working for a Fourth Reich whosp centre of gravity will not be in the West, where the Federal Republic of today is based, and Dr. Adenauer’s policy will be defeated. Yet there is no British statesman who imagines that anything else can arise in Germany offering better prospects for European peace.

Undoubtedly the work of the European Assembly is made much more difficult by the impatient Federalists who are so far ahead of public opinion in every country and who want the Assembly to run before it can walk : and it is true that no British spokesman, for either the Government or the Opposition, has held out false hopes that Britain might accept the authority of a Federal Parliament. But what we have suggested repeatedly is that we are willing to join in building up special European organs for functional purposes under a general Council of Ministers, and it is here that the progress has been so alarmingly slow and the presentation unimaginative, the forces of separatism and departmentalism so strong and Mr. Churchill’s Government apparently so much less convinced and keen than a year ago. Mr. Eden could find the time to go to Rome but not to Strasbourg, because Rome was a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with a strong American participation. But when Mr. Churchill reaches Washington in a few weeks’ time, he will find waiting for him the Senatorial resolution to withhold American aid from the European countries who will not combine to make a viable Europe.

Perhaps the Schuman Plan will prove the forerunner of a wider union, to which Great Britain will then have to pay greater regard. Addressing the Foreign Press Association in London last week, Dr. Adenauer said :

“It is not the fear of Bolshevism alone which moves us, but also the recognition, which has been gained independently of this, that the problems we have to face in our time, namely the preservation of peace and the defence of freedom, can only be solved inside that larger community. This conviction is shared by the broad masses in Germany. This fact enabled the Federal Government and the freely elected representatives of the German people to join the front ranks of the European Movement, and energetically to support every action tending towards the unification and integration of Europe. I may point out in this connection that the German Bundestag, on July 26th, 1950, pronounced itself unanimously in favour of the creation of a European Federation.” He went on to look for other functional unions of a practical type—-transport, communications and agriculture — with a common political organ over them and able to take decisions. If at the beginning the countries participating do so with the right to abstain and to contract out of particular decisions, there will be no greater sacrifice of sovereignty than there is in the international organizations in which they habitually take part today. But, of course, the intention must be for the practice of a majority decision to be accepted, as it is in fact likely to be, provided the main participants, the French and the Germans, achieve agreement.

On the credit side, the week has seen the rejection in the French Chamber, by a big majority, of the attempt to postpone ratification of the Schuman Plan. The reasons for M.

But Dr. Adenauer said also that Great Britain and the Commonwealth had manifested a certain reserve towards the plans for European unification ; “ a certain sharp-