Canada: EXTERNAL AFFAIRS: Hands Across the Sea

For months, Canada’s top brass had been getting off a lot of fine talk about a North Atlantic union for defense against Russia. Few Canadians paid much attention, or got much out of the vague and glittering generalities if they did. But last week, when news dispatches from Paris reported that Western Union countries (Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg) were ready to join Canada and the U.S. in a North Atlantic Security Pact, Canadians sat up with a start, asked to be told what was going on.

The government was ready to talk. Defense Minister Brooke Claxton led off in a coast-to-coast broadcast. Said he: “We are working out with other free nations plans for joint defense based on self-help and mutual aid.” Three days later, External Affairs Minister Lester (“Mike”) Pearson had his piece ready.

Last July, said Pearson, Canada and the U.S. had set out to discuss North Atlantic security with the five Western Union powers. For four months the talks had continued, ending only when officials felt they had gone as far as they could without further direction from their governments. Just how far discussions had gone on such all-important topics as military aid, neither Ottawa nor Washington was saying.

The other powers, Canada included, expected that after the election the U.S. would be ready to get down to cases on the cost (estimated at $2 billion a year) and the exact extent of U.S. military aid for Europe. Canada was ready to fit her military setup into the overall Atlantic scheme, but obviously her contribution would be mainly in the air, in air training, and as an arsenal of supply.

On what it meant in costs, in men, in material to Canada, the government was hazy. But clearly the government was preparing the public for its role in North Atlantic defense. At week’s end, Prime Minister-Designate Louis St. Laurent, long an apostle of North Atlantic security, said gravely: “Canada cannot possibly remain neutral in a third world war even if 11,999,999 out of 12,000,000 Canadians want to stay out … A third world war would produce results that cannot be conceived. But we believe there is a way such a happening can be prevented.”