Ground-Plan for an Army
A particularly interesting contribution to the discussion' of the European Army and its prospects was given by Dr. Blank, the .German Chancellor's adyiser on defence questions, on Monday. Fully accepting the position of the British and American forces in Europe as falling under N.A.T.O. and not forming part of the European Army, he stressed the need for contractual agreements both between the European Army Powers and between these and the British and Americans, and indicated broadly how the European Army would be built up. He anticipates an eighteen-month period of conscript service for the contingents from all the nations concerned. the con- tingents being trained on a national basis, but specifically as members of a European Army and with the likelihood, when passed into field formations, of being stationed in a country not their own. A suggestion that armament production in each country should be controlled by the defence community alone,, the community ordering arms as needed from producers in any participating country, and paying for them from the common budget, seems to be Dr. Blank's own. There is clearly very much to be said for it. The prospects of the success of the Pleven scheme can only be conjectured. but there could be no more hopeful omen than the efficacy of international military co-operation in Korea, as described very -strikingly tin a later page of this issue by a British officer lately fighting there.
