FIRST CITIZEN OF EUROPE
By SIR HAROLD BUTLER
FOR forty-eight hours the first European Assembly postponed the election of its President, because Monsieur Spaak was not yet available. As soon as he had divested himself of •the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was elected by acclamation. It was a rare compliment. In international assemblies there is usually keen competition for the chair, but on this occasion there was none. Paul Henri Spaak was by general consent the right, almost the only, man for the job.
It is worth pausing to analyse the reasons for this singular unanimity. In itself it suggests that Monsieur Spaak is one of the outstanding figures in Europe. Belgium has produced at the critical moment an international leader comparable in stature to Nansen and Branting after the first war. The fact that he comes from one of the smaller nations is only an incidental qualification, which has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. It is, however, an apt illustra- tion of the vital role of the smaller nations in European civilization. If they were to be merged into a homogeneous mass, which is fortunately not at all likely, the loss of their distinctive personalities to the society of western Europe would be immense. Much of its strength lies in its diversity, a truth which may some day become apparent to the suzerains of eastern Europe. If Belgium had been a province of France or of a pan-European State, Monsieur Spaak would hardly have achieved his meteoric political career.
Yet it is difficult to think that under any regime his light would have remained altogether obscured. A man who can become a Minister at thirty-five and a Prime Minister at thirty-nine is a phenomenon in any country in any circumstances. No doubt he started life with exceptional advantages. His grandfather had been the great Liberal leader of his day. His uncle resigned the premier- . ship in 1938 to his unrepentant nephew, whom in the past he had severely admonished as a wild and disorderly Socialist. His mother was the first woman elected to the Belgian Parliament. Politics were in his blood, but he brought to them personal as well as hereditary gifts. To see Monsieur Spaak addressing a mass meeting with a strong ingredient of Communist hecklers is an education to any aspiring politician. The dominating burly figure, the powerful voice, the lightning repartee, the ready appeal to ridicule, the occasional flights of poetic imagination, belong to the armoury of a great orator. Monsieur Spaak is capable of rising to the height of a great occasion, but in private life he can be as informal and human as anybody. He possesses in a marked degree that happy faculty of casting official cares to the wind and of putting all his humour and quickness of wit at the service of mere light-hearted conversa- tion. Nothing can subdue his zest for life, which flavours every- thing he does. That is not only one of his charms, but also one of the secrets of his success.
Personal magnetism and powers of speech go far to make a politician, but they do not make a statesman—and Monsieur Spaak has certainly crossed that indefinable frontier which separates the statesman from the politician. In part his passage has been assisted by a unique experience of foreign affairs. Until this month he had been Foreign Minister without interruption for ten years. Five of those years were spent in London. During the war one remembers him talking volubly and shrewdly in Eaton Square, which the Belgians called " Rue de la Loi," the Whitehall of Brussels. He got to know the people and the politics of this country as few foreigners have known them. He has even acquired some intimate ties with it through his children. But he did not suffer the common fate of exiles, for when he went home, he alone of the London Ministry retained his office. His fame was already rising both in Europe and America. He had headed the Belgian delegation to San Francisco and had taken an active part in creating the United Nations. When its first Assembly met, he at once became an inter- national figure as its first President. Since then he has played a prominent part in shaping the post-war world. Benelux, the Brussels Treaty, O.E.E.C. and the North Atlantic Pact owe much to his bold and dynamic leadership. Though Prime Minister, lie did not hesi- tate for a moment to become one of the Honorary Presidents of the European Movement, and now at the age of fifty he is the first President of the European Assembly.
A truly remarkable record, but one which requires something more for its achievement than the simple arts of the politician and the diplomatist. The fact is that Monsieur Spaak is a man who inspires confidence. He believes in what he says and makes other people feel that he believes. Whether as head of the Socialist Party or as Prime Minister or as a defender of the United Nations or as an advocate of European union, his words carry the weight of conviction with those who hear him. Nor is he afraid to use plain words when they are needed. Few people who listened to it have forgotten his speech at the Paris Assembly of the United Nations, in which he explained to the Russian delegation why Europe feared Soviet motives and Soviet power. The gist of this great philippic was contained in the phrase "we are afraid, because we have placed all our hopes and confidence in the defensive organisation of the United Nations ; and through the policy you have pursued, you are forbidding us to seek our security and our salvation within the framework of this organisa- tion, but making us seek it within the framework of a regional arrangement." That is the kernel of Spaak's outlook on the present world. As an idealist he supports the United Nations, as a realist he has entered into the Atlantic Pact, as an idealist and a realist he strives for a united Europe.
As might be expected, Monsieur Spaak looks on the European problem with a wary and practised eye. He realises all the diffi- culties. As he has put it, " we cannot build Europe in a day. It is an immense task, which can only be- carried out step by step." Nor does he imagine that it will be a painless process. He has had the courage to say that " in order to unite Europe, everyone, nations and individuals alike, must be prepared to make sacrifices of pride and—what is still more difficult—material sacrifices also." That is true, but few people have dared to say it out loud, and it cast a slight chill on the audience which first heard it. Monsieur Spaak would hardly have said it did he not passionately believe that the union of Europe is a paramount necessity for his own country and for Europe as a whole. That is his message and his first title to the presidency of the European Assembly. He is now the first citizen of Europe. It may well be that his message will become a mission.
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