19 MAY 1950, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK

AHOPEFUL and highly significant reaction to the announce- ment of the French proposal for the single control of coal . and steel production in France and Germany has been the immediate quickening of thought about its practical implications. For once an international problem is being tackled at the right end, beginning with precise and immediate questions of production instead of with the multiplication of high-level machinery. It can at once be seen that the questions to be answered at the outset are hard. But at least they are clear, and, in the form in which M. Schuman has so sharply and brilliantly posed them,. they cannot easily be evaded. Many political - possibilities arise from last week's proposals, but the starting point must be the concrete task of producing as much steel as is needed at the lowest cost. That leads to series of immediate questions. Will it be cheaper to produce crude steel in France and then take it to Germany for the later processes, or is some other division of function the right one ? When wage levels are-unequal, as they undoubtedly are as between France and Germany, just how are they to be levelled out ? How quickly can the present limitation on German steel production be removed and the law controlling Ruhr coal and steel revised—for these changes will undoubtedly be essential ?

As each of these questions is tackled a number of broader principles must be kept continually in mind. International steel agreements in the past have been all too often associated with the limitation /of output, and the dangers of such a course must be resolutely avoided. If the element of competition is to be reduced, as it must be under a new international agreement, an element of stagnation must not be introduced in its place. The illusion, from which Great Britain has suffered since the war, that the rest of the economy will stand still while the basic industries are reorganised, must not be allowed new scope on the larger European scene. It is quite inevitable that joint action on coal and steel will lead to joint action elsewhere. But it is precisely this fact—the extension of practical co-operation throughout the economic field and from there into international politics—which makes the Schuman proposal so profoundly important. There will be difficulties and dangers at every stage but they can be progressively reduced if a start is made with the foundation of European co-operation, which is the stable organisation of its economic life instead of with the roof of the structure on which most work has been done so far.