Spaak's Leadership
The visit of M. Paul-Henri Spaak to this country has been of great value. He comes with a unique reputation, created not so much by his notable political career in his own country as by his brilliantly able chairmanship of the first meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1946 and then of the first meeting of the European Consultative Assembly at Strasbourg this year. The Belgian statesman, for he is much more than a routine politician, came with one urgent appeal and two emphatic assurances—neither of them superfluous. The appeal was to this country to recognise its responsibility and pull its full weight in a Europe which without Britain would be no more than a mutilated fragment. The first assurance was that Britain's predominating commitments to the Commonwealth were too well understood for her ever to be asked to choose between the Commonwealth and Europe ; the other was that there was no thought of binding Britain by a rigid constitution, federalist or any other ; Europe must be built step by step, by a process of steady progress and evolution. On the first point Mr. Churchill, at the Kingsway Hall meeting on Monday, declared Britain to be an integral part of Europe, an affirmation which the overwhelming mass of public opinion will endorse. But there are still problems to solve. To reconcile Britain's commitments to the Commonwealth with her growing commitments to an evolving Europe will be difficult, but no one can believe it impossible.• And if the sworn federalists are prepared to accept M. Spaak's counsel and let development take its natural course, instead of pressing for the creation of a system which constitutionally Britain could not accept, and most Britons would not accept if they could, the Council of Europe will have smoother water before it than at one time seemed likely.
