Simple Sampson
KEITH KYLE
Whatever became of James Roosevelt, ma's boy, Erich Mende, the former rot' Vice-Chan- cellor of West Germany, and Sir Eric Wyndham White, Britain's gift to Gsrr? Mr Anthony Sampson, in his urbane once-over-lightly survey of the Europe of the Six, supplies the answer. They all went to work for Mr Bernie Cornfeld, the Rumanian American, who from Voltaire's Ferney sells investments in American growth _stocks by methods that have been censured by America's own Securities and Exchange Com- mission.
This and much other curious information, such as the phenomenal impact on continental eating habits of the manufacture and mass dis- tribution of frozen fish fingers, is conveyed by the new Europe's new John Gunther in a book which has been extravagantly praised. Often in the course of reading it one wonders why. It is an unpretentious adaptation to the continental scene of the knowledgeable (and sometimes knowing) gossip and profile techniques which have set a style in Sunday newspaper writing and have brought the author success with two previous books on Britain and one on Harold Macmillan. It is a style which underlines in- essential (and not always accurate) detail to convey an atmosphere of authenticity while yet, like good conversation, moving on painlessly though often inconsequentially from one topic to the next, so as to avoid the risk of exceeding the reader's attention span.
For Mr Sampson it is not sufficient to say that Jean Monnet proposed the extraordinary plan for an Anglo-French union bunched by Chur- chill in 1940, which is true: he has to add that Monnet 'actually drafted' it. which is not true since Vansittart did. Altogether this is a difficult book to come to grips with—which perhaps ex- plains the indulgence of so many of its reviews —because it is unclear whether it is intended only to be impressionistic, in which case it can be judgsd by its often judicious tone and its frequently illuminating insights, or whether it is meant literally, as its sub-title suggests, to be a 'guide' to the 'workings' and 'institutions' as well as to the `character of contemporary West- ern Europe.'
As a 'guide' it is exceedingly uneven. Certain topics are well covered: the Euro-dollar market, the near-fiasco of Euratom and the European space agencies, the current list of joint Euro- pean projects, like Concorde and the airbus, the Italian, French and German automobile indus- tries, the training of French civil servants, the 'big twenty' companies in Europe. The excellent index will send you, on those matters which in- terested Mr Sampson, to a concise, elegant ex- planation. But if you are interested in- some- thing which bores him or that he thinks will bore you you are just out of luck. The chapter which describes the European Commission and explains the 'Community method' is perfunc- tory to the point of obscurity and, when he comes to discuss NATO, Mr Sampson's ruling that 'the complex arguments concerning the de- fence of Europe are beyond-the scope of this book' leaves many of his observations strangely unanchored. (He is however very good on the failure to achieve standardisation of weapons.) The weakness of Mr Sampson's method is most apparent in his description of the famous 'constitutional crisis' of 1965 between France and the EEC, or, as Mr Sampson would prefer to put it, between the 'Pope' (Hallstein) and the 'Emperor' (de Gaulle). His brief account, though it broadly gives the right impression of the effect of the whole crisis, tends to confirm rather than rectify the widespread misunder- standing of what actually happened. It implies that the financing of the agricultural fund through the Community rather than the govern- ments was distasteful to the French; in fact it was France which was insisting upon it. It leaves the impression that only agricultural revenues and expenditures were involved in the Commis- sion's 'package' proposal whereas in fact cus- toms revenues were also to go directly to the Community, leaving its central fund substan- tially in surplus from 1971 onwards. •
Finally, Mr Sampson says that the Commis- sion wanted to strengthen the European parlia- ment to give it power to debate and reject the Community's budget, and that this proposal was received enthusiastically by the parliament though it infuriated the French. The only thing right about this summary is the fury of the French. In fact, the Commission suggested that parliament should be able to amend (not reject) the budget but that its amendments could be overruled by the Council of Ministers (by a five to one vote if the Commission agreed with the parliament, or a four to two vote if the Com- mission agreed with council). The parliament, so far from being enthusiastic, thought this did not go nearly far enough and passed a resolu- tion asking for the power, which the Commis- sion had not proposed to give it, to reject the budget if the council had overruled its amend- ments.
It may be argued by Mr Sampson's many admirers that he holds his large audience pre- cisely by sparing it this type of complicated detail. The trouble is that detail is his method in other areas where its relevance is not quite so obvious, whereas the careful weighting of the relationship between the different institutions of the Common Market constitutes the essence of the famous 'Community method.'
On one theme. however. Mr Sampson is quite brilliant and achieves a depth of analysis which is less apparent elsewhere. This is where he dis- cusses the relationship between 'the new Euro- peans' and the United States. 'Nothing makes Europeans feel more European than talking about Americans,' he observes. 'But behind this lies another paradox; that it is the Europeans who are most "Americanised," most fascinated by transatlantic ideas, who feel most strongly the need to counter them .. . when they discuss Europe they discuss it in American terms. Con- versely the most thorough anti-Americans are also anti-Europeans . . .' Mr Sampson has noticed that he has found it impossible to dis- cuss new Europeans without also discussing Americans. 'The common threads of European unity all seem to lead off the map, westwards
. In each [sphere] the trend is towards more; not less, involvement with America.'
Mr Sampson's knowledge of history, especi- ally-of the nineteenth century, is responsible for some of his best remarks. He rightly detects the Saint-Simonian tradition in the European Com- mission's outlook (though Mr Mansholt per- kali§ would not agree), he remembers that the Victorian English were considered by conti- nentals to have most of the idiosyncrasies and obsessions that all Europeans including our- selves now attribute to Americans, and he dates the 'first British awareness of technological backwardness in competition with America and Germany at the turn of the century. (Fred Mackenzie's 1901 book The American Invaders is quoted to great effect.) It is such incidentals that stick in the mind rather than any total impact. Mr Sampson has a habit of writing off his own discoveries; he will follow an argument to and fro for a while and then, as if discouraged, observe that it does not amount to very much and pass on. For this reason it comes as a surprise to discover that he has quite strong views about Britain's future relations with the continental Europeans, be- cause there is nothing in the body of the book to give the impression that he thinks there is much in it either way.
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