Ebbing Tide

Europe's foreign ministers consulted their calendars and saw that the time had come to talk about a European Political Community (EPC). So these busy men clapped on their Homburgs and journeyed to The Hague. In the 13th century Ridder-zaal (Hall of the Counts), the Dutch had laid a diplomatic table for six.

Germany's Konrad Adenauer proved the most ardent champion of EPC: the prosperous Germans evidently believe that they will come out on top in any U.S. of Europe. The big question remained: What will France do? Foreign Minister Bidault, fighting in the National Assembly for the less demanding European Defense Community (EDC), did not arrive in The Hague until the conference was nearly over. When he did get there, he made only this clear: if France fears EDC, it is scared stiff of EPC.

Italy's Giuseppe Pella was attending his first full-blown foreign ministers' conference, but he got off to a mellow start.

"What I would like to see is a house for the two children [meaning the Schumann Coal-Steel Plan and EDC], presided over by a loving mother [EPC]." Fella's metaphor was shot on the wing. "If we go on this way," said Holland's Johan Beyen, "we shall have an orphanage run by a virgin, pure but sterile."

Belgium's Paul Van Zeeland thought that abandoning EPC would be like "a procession at Echternach," where annually, on Whit-Tuesdays, the townsfolk march through the streets taking five steps forward, three steps back. Echternach is in Luxembourg, and that gave Luxembourg's Joseph Bech the cue he was waiting for: "At least they make some progress. And they do it every year."

Thus prodded, the ministers took one big step forward. They agreed that EPC should have a Chambre des Peuples, elected by universal suffrage from all six member nations. Once the people of Europe start voting for a common assembly, not as citizens of each nation but as part of a European community, its advocates are convinced that the European idea will really start rolling, and will not be stopped.

The problem is to get the voting started --and last week the prospects seemed gloomier than they did a year ago. In 1952 the tide of Europe's affairs seemed broadly set in the direction of unity. Today, the tide has spent its force and is ebbing away--in the whirlpools of Trieste and the Saar, among the reefs of parliamentary maneuver, the shoals of timidity. Throughout Western Europe the ministers still meet, the experts debate, the common people still hope--as if hope alone can create the thing they contemplate. But where there was momentum, today there is little more than foam. The noble ideal of a U.S. of Europe is in danger of becoming driftwood, left high & dry on the beaches.

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