So much for the light relief. But for all the
uncertainty, confusion, depression and indeed dread in which the talking came to a stop, some- thing emerged. Speaker after speaker had talked of Atlanticisation and the like. Goodness knows what many of them meant by it, if anything, except that to fall out with the United States would be catastrophic for Europe. But when all had been said, the disparate fragments of thought and emotion suddenly fell into place. It was not the shadow of de Gaulle that had dominated the conference, but the absence of the shadow of President Kennedy. Nobody, of course, had dared to say so for fear of looking foolish and naively utopian, but it emerged beyond a doubt that the basic choice lurking in the very centre of the present disarray is not Germany's but the United States'. The true political initiative required to resolve, partially at least, the national and international dilemmas of the Western world can only be provided by the United States, and it would have to be something a great deal more daring than 'multilateralism' or any other such face-saving gimmicks. There is a deep conviction that, if things move on along present lines, the United States will pull out and leave Europe in a nasty soup. The only real alternative is a genuine degree of political merging powerful enough to transform the North Atlantic once and for all into an inland sea.
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