"Welcome Us with Joy"

In evident fear and frustration, the Soviets have stepped up their attacks on the booming, capitalist Common Market. Last week the Kremlin signed up a new member in its Hate-the-Six campaign: Communist Yugoslavia. Winding up a ten-day visit to Belgrade, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Yugoslav President Tito signed a joint declaration that, among other things, condemned the Common Market as a Western scheme to exploit outsiders by raising discriminatory "artificial barriers" against them.

It was the same argument, designed specifically to scare the daylights out of the underdeveloped countries, that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko used in his opening speech to the United Nations, and that Soviet diplomats were still peddling in the corridors. Several of the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia. whose foreign policy is neutralist or left-leaning anyway, accepted the Red reasoning. Said the representative of Guinea: "The direct colonial exploitation of yesteryear is now being substituted by that of international monopolies."

Last week the Six gave an eloquent reply through Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak. When he finished, even the ambassadors from Guinea. Ghana and other Marx-minded nations added their applause to the wave of hand clapping. Said Spaak:

"You are apprehensive; you find us too wealthy and you fear that we are selfish. You are wrong. Modern Europe cannot appear before the world as an association of rich and selfish countries. If we were to fall into this error, we would never be able to find our place in the world. We would be detested and hated, but let me tell you that we would also be stupid. Our countries must export ... If we ruin our clients, we ruin ourselves."

Spaak closed his hardheaded appeal with a plea for understanding the aims of the new Europe. "To try to unify Europe is to try to break through frontiers which are too narrow for today. To unify Europe is not to fall back on an autarchic concept; it is a step toward universality . . . Welcome us without fear; welcome us, on the contrary, with confidence and joy, for it is to all, without exception, that we extend our friendly hand."

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