"I Have Something Here"

The French cabinet listened attentively as Foreign Minister Robert Schuman reported a conversation he had had the day before with U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The Secretary, on his way to the London conference, had in effect said that Western Europe had bet ter get going in its conduct of the cold war and it had better lift its defenses out of the blueprint stage. As Schuman interpreted the Secretary's views, Acheson meant that everyone would have to make real sacrifices for a real defense system--and a real defense would be impossible if Western Germany were to be left out of it.

Schuman summed up his own stand: "It has often been said that security is indivisible. In any case, security is not supernatural. One can't add to it by subtracting from it."

Schuman's colleagues stirred uneasily in their gilt and cherry chairs. In theory they were all for adding Western Germany to Western Europe's defense front. In practice, they were dead set against any real German participation, e.g., German membership in the North Atlantic Treaty. As politicians, almost all of them still believed that damning the boche was the cheapest way of getting votes in France. A week before, they had instructed Schuman to stall on the whole issue. But now Schuman said: "J'ai quelque chose ici" . .[I have something here]."

Schuman fumbled in his bulging black briefcase, first brought out a wrong document, then produced the right one. It was a plan that would bring West Germany more surely into the West European camp than anything proposed so far; it would also lay the beginnings of real Western European integration. The plan called for pooling of the French and German coal and steel industries.

"A Broader Community." These industries now operate under precisely the kind of artificial conditions which ECA's Paul Hoffman and other U.S. preachers of "integration" want abolished. The Germans sell their Ruhr coal to French steelmakers at a price up to 30% higher than the coal price for domestic German buyers. The French sell their Lorraine iron ore to German steelmakers at far higher prices than they charge at home. Tariffs, import quotas and government subsidies further protect the French steel industry from competition by lower-priced German steel, keep prices high, markets divided and output lower than it should be.

The Schuman plan would establish a single steel and coal market for France and Germany, plus any other European countries that want to join. It would abolish customs duties and discriminatory freight rates on coal and steel. A joint international authority of the member nations would be set up to run the industries, with the specific tasks of 1) modernizing production; 2) supplying coal and steel to France, Germany and other members of the combine "on equal terms"; 3) developing joint exports to other countries.

Unlike most international bodies existing or proposed these days, the coal-steel authority would have real powers. Its members, while appointed by governments, would be "independent personalities" able to make binding commitments. There would be no veto--majority rule would prevail. The authority's decision would be enforceable in all member nations. With a polite bow to U.N., the Schuman plan also called for a U.N. representative to sit on the new organization, make periodic reports "particularly with respect to protecting its peaceful aims."

Anticipating charges that the proposed coal-steel pool would merely be a vast cartel, the Schuman plan carefully points out that the new organization would not, like a cartel, divide markets and keep prices artificially high; on the contrary, it would create a larger market, see to it that member industries produced the most coal and steel at the cheapest possible price. It would in fact enforce competition.

Schuman also mentioned an important but rarely considered task: the industrial development of Africa, which the new coal-steel combine could get started.

Said the Schuman plan: "A united Europe will not be achieved all at once . . . It will be formed by concrete measures which first of all create a solidarity in fact . . . The pooling of coal and steel production . . . will change the destiny of these regions [Lorraine, the Saar and the Ruhr] which have long been devoted to the production of arms to which they themselves were first to fall constantly victim . . . [It will] introduce a broader and deeper community of interest between countries which have long been divided by bloody conflict . . ."

"It Is 1936 Again." The surprisingly and refreshingly "concrete measures" proposed by the Schuman plan were worked out by shrewd Jean Monnet, France's commissioner for economic planning, and three of his aides, who had been busy with the plan for weeks. Apart from these four, only three other Frenchmen (Schuman, one of his aides, and Premier Bidault) had known about the plan before Schuman submitted it to the French cabinet. Secretary Acheson got a brief fill-in from Schuman the day before he left for London but was asked not to tell even his aides about it for 24 hours. After prompt cabinet approval, Schuman sprang it on the British through diplomatic channels and handed it to the press. One of the best-kept secrets of the cold war, it came as an electrifying surprise.

In London, Dean Acheson expressed "sympathy and approval." Later, in Washington, Paul Hoffman sent up a fervent cheer. West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, an old advocate of closer Franco-German relations, beamed and called the Schuman plan a "gracious step," an event of "world historic importance." The British Labor government growled and gruffed. But in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Clement Attlee promised "very careful study," added with an almost audible gulp "His Majesty's Government will approach the problem with a sympathetic spirit . . ."

In the past, even enlightened Frenchmen like Schuman, who do not overestimate the boche bogey, had been reluctant about Franco-German economic integration because they were afraid that, without the British in on the deal to help outbalance German productive capacity, French industry would be swamped by Germany. But the French government had overcome this fear. Said one French diplomat last week: "In 1936, when Hitler occupied the Rhineland, we refrained from moving in because the British wouldn't come with us. Afterwards, the British told us, 'If you had marched, we should have been obliged to come with you.' Now it is 1936 again, but this time we are going ahead. When the British are convinced that we mean it, they will come with us."

If the plan was adopted, the sprawling, intricate industries could probably not be geared to work together in less than a year's time.

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