WESTERN UNION: Hare v. Tortoise

In a small grey building on ParisQuai d’Orsay, tucked away between the French National Assembly and the former Foreign Ministry, lives Elder Statesman Edouard Herriot, Assembly president and perennial mayor of Lyon. In his pale green salon, Herriot last week received several diplomatic callers. They settled on red-upholstered, gilt Louis XV chairs, beneath five huge crystal chandeliers, to discuss one of Europe’s great hopes: Western Union. They got nowhere. Britain and France were deeply divided.

Assembly v. Conference. Last year, France and Belgium had suggested formation of a “consultative assembly” as a first step toward a Western Union parliament. The matter had been referred to a committee of five (Britain, France and the Benelux nations). The French, who took the role of the hare in the race toward union (if race it was), wanted an assembly whose delegates would directly represent their countries’ population. They would vote publicly, without regard to the nations’ official policies. They could not commit their governments to action; they could, however, stir up public opinion at home. The British, who were playing tortoise, suggested, instead, a council of ministers which would meet in private; the members would merely represent their governments, and be bound by them.

Last week, the committee of five met in M. Herriot’s salon to see whether they could get to a compromise. The French were represented by tough little ex-Premier Paul Reynaud and by vague old Leon Blum. Horse-faced Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, headed the British delegation. Dalton offered a concession: Britain would agree to a European “conference” to meet publicly (once a year for three weeks), but the delegates must still be bound by the instructions of their governments. Up from his fragile chair popped Paul Reynaud. “You would find no one willing to sit in a pseudo-parliament of this nature,” he cried. “It is paradoxical that the mother of parliaments should propose the formation of such an authoritarian assembly.”

Chairman Herriot, grunting like a frustrated bear, scratched his massive head and remarked that there did not seem anything to do except refer the controversy back to the Western Foreign Ministers, who will meet in London this week. Herriot’s callers were escorted to the door by five ushers in evening dress. As the delegates got into their cars, Paul Reynaud told a British journalist that on this issue Britain appeared en mauvaise posture. “Yes,” the Briton translated freely, “we are on a bad wicket.”

Reynaud, whose English does not encompass the playing fields of Eton, gave the Briton a blank stare and rode off.

Lancashire v. Lyon. What had happened to Western Union? Last year, Winston Churchill had grandly advocated the “grand design.” All that Europe heard from Britain on the subject now was what one U.S. newsman called “the dull plop-plop” of Ernie Bevin’s speeches, urging step-by-step progress. A British M.P. last week explained: “The French plan is an effort to pass on to some kind of European government the problems which the French government has so much trouble solving. Some call it ‘escapism.’ I prefer to call it the search for a short cut.”

Everybody knew that real Western Union would require some sacrifice of national sovereignty. So far, no nation has been willing to make this sacrifice; the French plan does not call for it either. Nevertheless, the French believe that their assembly would at least be a step in the right direction. The British believe that this is self-deception. They claim that (like U.N.) the assembly would raise extravagant hopes of unity where conditions for unity are not yet ripe.

British planners illustrate the point this way. In any effective European federation, tariff barriers would come down. That might mean, under a free economy, that some inefficient Lancashire textile plant would close down while production would be expanded in a Lyon factory, better situated for general European trade. In a planned economy (which Britain’s Socialist government considers indispensable to Western Union), the Lancashire-Lyon shift would be the subject of a formal government decision. It would come up for discussion in the kind of assembly the French want (say the British), and it would stir up nationalist resentment in Lancashire, which would make agreement harder.

Wine v. Potatoes. Behind the British-French argument on a European assembly lies a vast difference between Britain’s and France’s national way of life. The British are fighting a hard, increasingly successful battle for economic survival through planned austerity. The French have chosen a sometimes crooked middle road between a free economy and socialism, rely almost entirely on U.S. help for survival; as a result France has one of Europe’s weakest currencies.

The French are beset by Communist sabotage, and a black market raised to the status of a national institution. How hard it would be to make these economies jibe is shown by France’s wine industry, which traditionally depended on exporting its luxury products to Britain. Austeritarian Britain can no longer afford them. Some Britons coldly suggest that the French would do better to pull up some of their vines and plant potatoes instead.

British fear of French “instability” is not confined to economics. Many British officials suspect that France’s desire for Western Union is merely an outgrowth of the “Third Force” movement. Edouard Herriot and Leon Blum, the leaders of France’s drive for a European parliament, are also prophets of the Third Force—the middle man. The British fear that men like Herriot and Blum would try to turn Western Union from a militant anti-Communist federation into a bloc which would pursue the illusion of neutrality between Russia and the West.

Bevin v. Charlemagne. The French are rather tired of Britain’s patent virtue and self-righteousness. Many Frenchmen accuse the British of playing their old game —trying to interfere, without being responsibly involved, in the Continent’s destiny. Thinking Frenchmen understand Britain’s hesitations. They realize that it is asking a lot of Britain to tie her recovering economy to France’s, and to rate the defense of Strasbourg as important as the defense of Dover. Still, they believe that, in order to achieve European union, the British must take military and economic risks, i.e., gamble on the hope that the French will somehow pull through.

A British official last week complained: “All Frenchmen have a bit of Charles de Gaulle in them. They dream a little of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.” Such little—or big—dreams might prove as necessary to build European union as Ernie Bevin’s steady plop-plop.