Peace Conference?

In Paris this week delegates from France, Western Germany, Italy and the Benelux nations gather in the august Salon de I'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry. Their task is to hammer out an agreement which will give substance to Robert Schuman's bold plan for pooling Western Europe's coal and steel industries. To most of the delegates it means the practical beginning of an undertaking which in the past has been little more than an oratorical flourish: Western Europe's union. But above the hopeful voices in Paris was audible a disturbing buzz--the voice of doctrinaire Socialism.

In its ill-timed pamphlet setting forth its attitude toward Western European integration (see below), the British Labor Party had gone far beyond the understandable, if disappointing, caution which the British government had so far displayed toward the Schuman Plan. Despite all of Prime Minister Clement Attlee's subsequent attempts to soften the blow, the Labor Party had finally, bluntly admitted what it had long suggested by its actions: it was dead set against any scheme of European union that was 1) not controlled by Socialists, 2) involved a sacrifice of national sovereignty, i.e., the national Socialist's sovereign right to plan as he pleased. No one could blame the Schuman Plan's supporters if they reached the conclusion that it had become a matter (in the words of the London Economist) of "Socialism Contra Mundum."

When the first squall caused by the Labor pamphlet had quieted down, it became evident that the British government was still far from a flat stand against one of the world's best hopes. British officials last week cagily lifted a few inches of heavy wrapping from something called the Plowden Plan. Drafted by Treasury's Chairman of the Economic Planning Board Sir Edwin Plowden, it offered as its main feature a coal-steel pool without the sweeping powers which Schuman had called for. It held out some strictly limited hope that a practical compromise between the British and the continental powers might yet be reached. Nervously the British declared that they would be glad to submit the Plowden Plan at the Paris conference--if any one asked them to. Reported a London correspondent: "The British observers in Paris are under instructions which in effect say, 'Speak only when spoken to.' "

Meanwhile, last week's controversy could not obscure the fact that Europe's traditional enemies, France and Germany, were prepared to deliver to some European authority the guts of their industries. Said one German delegate: "This in effect is the Peace Conference. For whatever we sign will be a treaty that we will not, that we cannot, fight each other again."

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