Federation

Throughout history, practical and pragmatic politicians from Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler have seen the need for a United Europe and welded large sections of that unhappy continent into unions imposed by force and sustained by fear. The occasional prophet who dared envision a Europe united, like Tennyson's "Parliament of man," in voluntary federation for the common good was condemned to brood alone in the Poets' Corner.

Today, practical men as well as dreamers are talking as they have never talked before of federation in the West. They know that in the East a federation already exists: imposed, like Caesar's and Hitler's, by Stalin. In the face of this fact, does the West mean only to talk about federation?

In Strasbourg last week, Paul-Henri Spaak, acknowledged leader of the federation forces, resigned his job as President of the Council of Europe's Consultative Assembly (see below) with a ringing indictment of all the proud and cautious pettifoggers who could agree only on "what could not be done." He grieved, but he did not give up. Oddly enough, his disillusioned outcry came in a week when France for the first time in its history pledged itself to surrender some of its sovereignty: the French Parliament ratified the Schuman Plan to pool Europe's coal and steel. One of two traditional enemies was willing to share with the other the very source of power and strength over which they had fought so often. It might be but a mere pinprick in the barrier of distrust. Yet through that pinprick shone a slim ray that might yet light the way to unity in Europe.

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