CRISIS IN EUROPE
MENDES-FRANCE'S proposals for modifying the treaty of the European Defence Community have agitated the capitals of Western Europe and the • United States to a degree that amounts to a crisis in Western policy. The text has not been published; but What the French Prime Minister appears to have done is to propose modifications in the treaty designed to convert those in France—that is, for the most part, French right wing opinion—who oppose it on the grounds that it merely creates a German army at the expense of the French army. He has to the process caused his allies to protest on three major counts. The first is that the alterations demanded by the French are four fundamental that they would require re-ratification by the tour countries, including Germany. that have already ratified the treaty. If this is in fact true, then there is something to Protest about. For the dominant factor at the moment is 91e shortage of time—before the Russian peace offensive gets Into its swing and thoroughly unsettles the Western alliance; ?before Dr. Adenauer's attempt to make Germany secure !tithe Western alliance fatally loses its momentum. Therefore, III so far as the French proposals imply re-ratification, they may be less desirable than other possible alternatives (such as a decision to bring Germany directly into NATO), and l'4. Mendes-France was being misleading when he said last Saturday that: ' We can answer yes or no. But we cannot Waste time any more.' Whether they do in fact imply so fundamental a revision of "le treaty will not emerge until the meeting of the six interested nations, now going on in Brussels, is over. But a study of the treaty itself, and of its history, suggests that the initial reaction may have been emotional rather than legal. For the 8. econd count on which the proposals have been condemned 1;31 that they destroy the federal character of the Community. ,..11i1 can this be true ? Last November, M. Bidault (then Foreign Minister) made a speech to the Assembly in which he said : A European federation in the proper sense of the term, that '3 a sovereign authority controlling the international relations of its member states, is not within the domain of possibility at least for the present.' He undoubtedly shocked those of France's allies who had been trying to persuade themselves that there was something federal about the EDC; but he was very little distance indeed from the text of the treaty as finally drafted. According to that text, during the initial period of the Community the Council of Ministers act in all basic matters as though they were an international, not a supra- national, body (that is, their decision, for example, on the budget and on the organisation of forces is taken by unanimous vote which any member may veto). Only in one instance. that is in their ' directions' to the Board of Commissioners on the detailed programmes of armament, equipment and research, is their decision to be taken by majority Vote. It *rue that the Board of Commissioners originally had, within these limits, large 'powers of discretion which M. Mendes- France may now be seeking to reduce. But this surely need not destroy the heart of the treaty which lies in its provisions for integration at Army Corps level in the field.
The third, and most persuasive, ground of protest against M. Mendes-France is concerned with the fact that he is pro- posing to make the treaty discriminatory against Germany, by including in it only those French forces stationed in Germany and by precluding German forces from being stationed abroad.
Since the alternative to a modified treaty is likely to be something worse than a modified treaty, the real question which France's allies must decide for themselves is whether the French Prime Minister is an honest man. If they believe that he is trying to find his way round a difficult obstacle for the benefit of Western Europe, then they must go as near to the edge as possible in order to help him. If they believe, as the Russians still seem to believe, that he is at heart a neutralist who is trying to extract himself from a forward position. with his right eye on a European settlement with the Communists, then it does not much matter what they do. They may as well call it a day and rearm Germany without the consent of France. But Europe would never be quite the same again.
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