SEE THAT the French financial periodical Les Echos thinks that
Sir Anthony Eden 'est devenu Europeen,' because he is convinced that Labour will win the next election and unless something is done will then ruin the country by 'un retour d un dirigisme.' , The Conservatives, Les Echos asserts, have agreed to British participation in the Free Trade area in order to prevent Labour controlling and ruining our economy. The paper adds that if it appears unlikely that Labour will win the next election there is a 'grand risque' that the whole project will come to nothing. While it is of course true that the Free Trade area might stop Labour building Socialism in one coun- try, the article slightly reminds me of the scene in Sir Harold Nicolson's novel Public Faces where the French Foreign Secre- tary at the height of an international crisis takes a series of disasters in his stride but becomes quite unnerved when he learns that the British Foreign Secretary has left by air for an unknown destination. This is too much for the French, who assume that he must be engaged in some deep Machiavellian design or he would never have left London during the crisis; in fact he had flown to Gloucestershire for the weekend because his wife had been tiresome at breakfast.
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