MR. EDEN AND EUROPE
THE latest of the frequent phases in which the countries of Western Europe concentrate on their mutual relation- ships and organisation is already beginning. The meeting of thc Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg next week will have been preceded by this week's session of the Council of Ministers of the European coal and steel community and the first meeting of that community's Parliamentary Assembly. It will be most surprising if the discussions at the first two meetings do not have a considerable effect on the third. The exact relationship between Jhe Council of Europe on the one hated and the defence and coal and steel communities on the other is rapidly becoming the main centre of discussion. Before next week is over the argument, coming mainly from French and Italian sources, that the Parliamentary Assembly of the coal and steel community could go right on to prepare a constitution for a European political federation, will have been brought face to face with the argu- ment, advanced by the British Foreign Secretary, that both the coal and steel and defence communities could be fitted into the framework of the Council of Europe itself. It is unlikely, since both parties are doing their best to put forward their views in a temperate manner, that this confrontation will pro- duce an explosion. But it is perfectly possible that it will produce a very keen argument.
Mr. Eden is clearly not intending to drop the policy he has so consistently followed so far. He has already secured, last March, the approval in principle of his plan by both the Council of Ministers and the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. His speech at Sheffield on Monday was an unequivocal restatement of his views. It can possibly be squared with the arguments of M. de Menthon, who will pre- side over the European Assembly in Strasbourg next week, that a constituent assembly for a European federation could be set up at once. But Mr. Eden has never committed himself to that. In fatt he said on Monday " We cannot follow so far as many of them [i.e., continental nations] are ready to travel in towards union and federation " and it is therefore unlikely that he would be willing to see the two new com- munities ride rapidly off in that direction with Britain trying to keep up with them. His anxiety that the whole movement shall be placed inside the Council of Europe therefore becomes something much more immediately important than a mere aspiration.
