LITTLE EUROPE
Sta,—Anthony Hartley's article (Spectator, April 19) is the best analysis of this problem I have yet read. I particularly liked the fact that he did not try to suggest alternatives to European unity. There is no alternative: everything else is second best, even if necessary as interim arrangements. The next few months will show whether such arrangements can be made in the military and economic fields. By the summer we can be certain whether General de Gaulle really meant what he said when he wrote in the third volume of his Memoirs: Bring the countries adjoining the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees to group themselves around France. From a political, economic and strategic point of view make of this organisation one of the three planetary powers the equal, and if one day it is necessary, the arbiter between the two camps: the Russian and the Anglo- Saxon.
I agree with Mr. Hartley that the Labour Party's plans to abandon the British nuclear deterrent are likely to weaken Britain's negotiating hands, both as regards greater unity in Europe and as regards closer European co-operation with the United States. But the glee with which some MPs who backed Mr. Wilson for the party leadership speak of the break- down of the Brussels negotiations leads me to ask whether under his leadership the Socialists would show any interest in closer European unity. To find leading Socialists in Western Europe who share Mr. Wilson's approach to European problems would be nigh impossible. I hope the European-minded Social Democrats in the Labour Party will soon reassert themselves.
TUFTON BEAMISH
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