International: Our Poor Old World

A year and a half ago Charles de Gaulle so feared that a threat to France’s independence was implicit in Soviet-U.S. rivalry that he called for a Europe isolated from both groups, an element of “equilibrium” between the two. Since then, De Gaulle’s icy isolationism has been thawing.

This week, in a speech at Compiègne, De Gaulle cried: “It is necessary that the efforts of the old Europe and those of America be joined to put our poor old world back on its feet. This means, with out any doubt, that the U.S. lend us large and prolonged help in the economic field [but, more than that], it is clear that their support should be spread at the same time to the field of defense in as precise and explicit a manner as the Marshall Plan does on credit and imports.”

He envisioned a mighty comity of nations, 250,000,000 strong, opposing Russia’s “docile, patient . . . 180,000,000, all manipulated by an absolute dictatorship.”

Even Germany belonged in the great Western coalition, De Gaulle conceded. “The German states, federating as they wished, would naturally find their place.”