It is difficult in Britain where the Council of Europe
is con- sidered an auxiliary institution, to realise the desperate hopes attached to it by millions. of Germans, Frenchmen and Italians who looked towards it as a body to supersede their national assemblies. Most of those hopes have now been disappointed. M. Philip's proposal for a jeu de paume oath by delegates not to separate until " Europe had been created " dies when he found that even federalists could not find enough enthusiasm to sustain it.
Yet, already there are signs that the Assembly by the diligence of some of its Members will be able to evolve important instru- ments for Europe's advantage. The Convention on Human Rights, presented by Sir David Mixwell-Fyfe in a speech that won merited acclamation, has been modified to meet the objections of the Committee of Ministers, the Socialists and the clericals. If a Convention on Human Rights had existed before the war, it might well have delayed, if not prevented, their steady destruction by Hitler.
A precise recommendation of the Cultural Committee to the Ministers has been that they should summon a Conference of Rectors and Vice-Chancellors of Europe's Universities to discuss the equivalence of degrees. If they agree there will be drama and colour, such has not been seen for twelve centuries, in a procession of Rectors and Vice-Chancellors from Padua, Heidle- berg, Lyons, Paris, Bonn, Istambul, Strasbourg and a dozen other places, moving in a solemn flow, towards the Senate House in Cambridge, where such a Conference should naturally be held.
At the end of the Session, the Socialists at Strasbourg presented their declaration on " Peace without Appeasement". A remarkable circumstance was that it was the first resolution put to the Assembly as a result of a concerted political action. It also had the entire backing of the German Social Democrats for its defence clauses, despite the fact that they had abstained from voting for the European Army. A Belgian Socialist, M. Rolin, criticised the resolution as not being concrete enough ; he at first wanted a delegation to go to Stalin. This suggestion was promptly crushed by the other delegates. The Resolution was also attacked by Continental Conservatives for its vagueness. Yet its proposers had no doubt that the Declaration of Stras- bourg could give hope and purpose to millions whose will might otherwise be paralysed by the cooing of the Stockholm vulture.
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