France and Europe
By D. R. GILLIE
Paris THE French National Assembly's vote approving ratifica- tion of the Schuman Plan Treaty (officially Treaty for the Creation of a European Community of Coal and Steel)' was an astonishing act of self-recovery by a body which had done its very best to damn itself in the eyes of the nation and the world in the first four months of its existence. There has been a good deal that is dreary in French post-war politics, but nothing has been drearier than the schools quarrel of the late summer, with the principles of a great dispute of fifty years ago (the separation of Church and State) applied meanly to a petty dispute about children's right to have State scholarships in private (i.e. denominational) schools and allowing these same schools some four milliard francs, provided the non-Catholic State schools got sixteen. Nothing could have been more depressing than the sight of Socialists putting a wages sliding scale through the Assembly with the help of Communists and Gaulleists in defiance of a Government that they wished to stay in office. It seemed for a time as if the only way a Govern- ment could stay in office was to efface itself and let all legislation be considered as private Bills. Since, after all, a country does need a Government, and the Assembly had taken a month to elect this one, it seemed as if the Prime Minister had no choice but to adopt this modest attitude in face of such a Parliament. But it is a difficult principle to apply in all cases, and only three weeks ago, when the Finance Minister, M. Rene Mayer, had to tell the Assembly of the sombre financial plight to which France, like Britain, is reduced, the Government could only find 247 Deputies (out of 625) to back it in its fight for solvency and a majority of 18, with both the Left and Right Wings of the so- called coalition abstaining.
In these circumstances the prospects of the Schuman Plan did not look very good. Here was a proposal to remove, after a short provisional period, protection from the French coal-mining and steel industries, to place them under an international authority, to accept the competition of the best organised as well as most naturally advantaged rivals in Europe, who were, to boot, the armourers of the hereditary enemy. It meant the biggest leap that the French Government had ever made, and it was made against the wishes of the French steel industry. It would not only be. a departure from a very long tradition of what was the national interest, since it would remove from direct national control the industries that were the basis of national defence, but, much more startling, it would be a breach with an old national habit, that of cartel-controlled prices behind comfortable customs barriers. It would be an act of confidence in the younger French technicians and in the adaptability of French workers to new industrial methods that came admirably, but surprisingly, from a country much of whose industry had long earned a reputation for obsolescence. An Assembly was to be asked to accept this whose majorities had all seemed to be negative ones cutting across the possibilities of Government. It was true that to refuse ratification was to make nonsense of French policy of the last four years. But Parliamentarians might argue that this policy had been more often than not smuggled in than frankly and fairly debated, that the Schuman Plan itself had been produced out of a hat before a Press conference on the eve of a meeting of Foreign Ministers, and not placed before the Assembly in a manner which gave the elected representatives of the people a chance to say if they were in genuine agreement. The first discussions of the Treaty in Committee—or rather in Committees, for in addition to that on Foreign Affairs, those of Finance, Economic Affairs, Industrial Production and National Defence had each their word to say—did not go very well. It was M. Robert Schuman himself who on his return from Rome finally secured a premonitory majority of 26 to 18 in the Committee' of Foreign Affairs. Often a poor debater in the Assembly (owing to his manner, not his matter), he is an excellent man in comtnittee. Indeed, it is as a committee-man that he slowly built up his reputation before the war. This vote, which showed an opposition of Communists, Gaulleists and one Right- wing Deputy, in fact, exactly forecast the ultimate division in the Assembly ; but for some time it seemed very doubtful whether the Assembly vote would be equally favourable, indeed if it would be favourable at all. The Committees of Finance and Industrial Production reached the same conclusion as that of Foreign Affaip, but the Committee of National Defence had a hostile majority (no doubt because the steel and coal pool was considered a first step to the European Army which this Com- mittee dislikes) and, what was much more dangerous, the Committee of Economic Affairs introduced the insidious idea of postponement.
For the National Assembly to have postponed discussion of the French Government's own Schuman Plan would have probably led to the gradual and irremediable collapse of the whole scheme like a pricked balloon. But the idea had a terrible attraction for the hesitant Deputy. In so vast and novel a scheme there was evidently a great deal that would bear longer study. What a relief to burdened mind and conscience just to put it all off! How statesmanlike it would sound in the con- stituency to say that the scheme was good. but the time not yet ripe! And this proposal narrowly missed acceptance when fifty Deputies of the Right asked for voting from the tribune " at three in the morning, a procedure which excludes voting by proxy, which is normal in the French Assembly. As things were that night, the absence of the Deputies at Strasbourg might have been enough to turn the scale against the Government. Proceedings had to be suspended, while the President of the Republic was awakened at Rambouillet fifty miles away and• rushed by car to Paris, so that at five in the morning a Council of Ministers lasting two minutes could authorise the Prime Minister to put the question of confidence in the constitutional sense. Since this requires an interval for reflection of a full calendar day, it gave the Government time to see that its troops were all present in person.
When the Assembly met again after the week-end the scene was mysteriously transformed. It was not advocates for the Treaty in this or that party that rose to plead for it, but party leaders, who rose to say that they and their followers would vote for it. The Deputies had mysteriously recovered the sense that a French National Assembly is a proper place to make history.
Considered as an act of faith in a united Europe, the debates went a great deal further than the vote. The Gaulleist opposition was not to European Union but to a piecemeal approach to Union under a technocratic authority. The last Gaulleist spokes- man, indeed, sharply attacked the rest of the Assembly and the other Continental nations represented at Strasbourg for not going right ahead and forming a European federal community without Great Britain. It is certainly not all Gaulleists who think like that, but it became clear in the course of the debate thit in no circum- stances would the Gaulleists oppose the European idea as such.
There remains the perpetual anxiety amongst Frenchmen about creating a European Union from which Britain will be absent, anxiety lest Germany may steal the show and give it an aggressive twist against the Slav bloc. The voices which are raised in somewhat shrill criticism of Britain are, it should be remembered, generally those of the men who have shown the warmest appreciation of Britain. The merely emotional problems of close association with Germany are very great, and those that present themselves to reason no smaller. Some form of-British participation, however limited, would reduce both, and the French, like the other Continental advocates of European Union, cannot be blamed for being aware of this. For the moment what seems the moral of the French debate on and ratification of the Schuman Plan is that, for all the doubts that Frenchmen still feel about European Union, it is .only in this direction that there is any salvation, not only on the inter- national, but also on the internal plane. It is on this issue that the French taste for ideas can today take a form above that of sectarian squibble. It is in the name of Europe that Frenchmen are prepared to disperse the stagnant quiet of the, small French town. It is when talking of Europe that the non-Communist draws level With the Communist in his hope for the future, cer- tainty of conviction and, in some respects, breadth of outlook. It is Europe that will remake France, Europe that will perhaps solve the French hope of giving liberty in overseas territories without breaking up their integration with, at present, one, at least, of Europe's nations—a problem that our cure-all, the Dominion, does not begin to solve. Indeed, we have got to the point at which failure to go forward on the European -path (or at least one of several possible European paths) will quite clearly mean moral, social and material dissolution, followed by Communist revolution up to the Channel.
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