NEWS OF THE WEEK F 4 XCHANGES between the British and French
Governments on M. Schuman's proposal for the joint control of the coal and steel industries of France, Germany and other countries have reached a positiim which is unfortunate and faintly ridiculous. The British Government insists on obtaining further information about the plan itself before making any declaration of support for it. The French Government wants a British state- ment of acceptance in principle at once, with discussion of detail to follow as soon as possible afterwards. But it must be perfectly clear to all concerned that, on the one hand, all the details cannot be clarified by the French Government at this time, since those details will partly depend on ■rehat the British Government wants ; while on the other hand any ,favourable pronouncement by the British Government on a project which it does not properly under- stand woulfil be a statement of only limited importance. So far the argument seems to be about nothitig in particular. The right course is to go straight to the exploratory talks, which both sides want. If those talks run into ;vat practical difficulties, as they well may, it is unlikely that any preliminary blessing on the enterprise pronounced by the British Government will make the difficulties worse. In fact if the French Government wants a blessing it had better have it. The attitude of the Foreign Office has had the effect of putting this country in the wrong in both Paris and Washington —a particularly unfortunate happening at this juncture. The most important and the most hopeful feature of the Schuman proposal is, and has been from the beginning,4that it translates international co-operation to the field of detailed practice. In such a context general pronouncements are reduced to secondary importance. The French will gain nothing by insisting on yet one more, and the British will lose nothing by providins one.
