NEWS OF THE WEEK With the various Western European States—in
some cases all of them, in others a few of them—involved in O.E.E.C., the Brussels Treaty, the Atlantic Treaty, the British Commonwealth of Nations, it is obviously essential that a great deal of co-ordination and simplification should be effected before there is serious talk of any new organisation. As a matter of fact Mr. Morrison's process of evolution is already at work. The European Assembly is intensely conscious of its own potentialities and has clearly every intention of developing them to the full, with the minimum of subjection to the Committee of Ministers. Mr. Churchill's proposal for a special session of the Assembly in a few months' time to deal with the admission of Germany, and Mr. Harold Macmillan's detailed resolu- tion setting a specific programme for the Assembly, providing for two regular sessions of the Assembly a year and the appointment of a Standing Committee to carry on between sessions, are unmistakable signs of virility. The Assembly may easily run into difficulties, but its permanence seems to be already assumed. There is clearly more danger of attempting too much, and too quickly, than too little. Whether it is salutary that the debates should be dominated by British speakers to the extent that they have been so far is open to question. But at least the legend of British indifference to the affairs of the Continent has been well shattered.
