The Elastic Atlantic
The Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg seems to have been acquainting itself with some of the complications which arise from the diplomatic fiction that the North Atlantic is not only an ocean but an " area," including an undefined extent of land. Mr. Edelman's popular proposal that a joint Atlantic resources and purchasing board should be created ran into the difficulty that Sweden, Turkey and Greece, although members of the Council of Europe, are not signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty, and the Assembly stopped short against the difficulty of defining the all-important word. The Turkish Government's representatives, both at Strasbourg and at the recent diplomatic consultations with the United States, Britain, France and Italy in Ankara, have expressed very strongly their view that Turkey should be allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty, thus advancing the frontier of the area to the Caucasus. The Assembly at Strasbourg has been reported as accepting Atlantic political union as a European purpose, because it has passed a resolution proposing consultation between itself and a delegation from the United States Congress, A good reason can be found for the Turkish anxiety to be formally associated with a group of States which is primarily concerned with defence against any Russian move to the West. The Turks, and the Greeks too, having made heavy sacrifices in such defence, might be permitted to swallow the vague term for the sake of the precise reality. But there is no good excuse for treating the word " Atlantic " as a sort of talisman which confers safety and prosperity on those who can attach it to themselves. In an article on a later page Mr. Herbert Agar refers to both the real difficulties and the real benefits of closer association between Europe and North America. The more precisely these benefits and difficulties are assessed and defined the better, and the process of achieving precision will probably be assisted if the habit of using the word " Atlantic " as an incantation is dropped.
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