NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE statement issued by the sponsors of "United Europe," chief among them Mr. Churchill, is a curiously indeterminate document, leaving the real purpose of the signatories in considerable obscurity. To say that " if Europe is to survive it must unite" means little unless the nature of the desired unity is defined. As examples of groupings of different•kinds the Pan-American Union, the British Commonwealth of Nations and the U.S.S.R. are cited, but it is hard to see how a United Europe could be constructed on any of these patterns, and it is a little ironical that the Russia which is thus invoked as a possible model is to be left outside the united continent altogether. It is premature, says the new committee, to define the precise constitutional relationship between the nations of a unified Europe, and the statement ends with the exhortation "let men of good will in all countries take counsel together that Europe may arise." If that is the first objective—and it is what Mr. Churchill ended on after a much more ambitious beginning in his two recent articles in the Daily Telegraph—men of good will in this country at any rate will cordially respond. But there must be some understanding of where they are going. The new committee includes some well-known Federal Unionists. Both Mr. Bevin and Mr. Eden have committed themselves to some rather remarkable aspirations for a world-government elected directly by the peoples over the heads of existing governments—a proposition which as soon as it is examined is seen to raise a multitude of apparently insuper- able difficulties. The fact is that in this sphere schemes of formal unity will do little or nothing in themselves to create the spirit of unity which alone matters ; on the other hand once that spirit has been generated the outward form takes shape almost of itself. The day will no doubt come when a European regional grouping within U.N.O. will be both practicable and desirable, though it is to be hoped that it will not be a grouping which excludes Russia. But at present U.N.O. itself is still at the beginning of its career. Its future is not yet certain. It needs the utmost support every man and every nation can give it. Whatever hope there may be later in a United Europe any deflection of effort or endeavour from U.N.O. to that at this stage would be a disaster. Let us build up what we have and what we so urgently need before dissipating limited energies on sectional structures, which will have no place within the whole if it should turn out that there is no whole to have a place in.
