AFTER EDC WHAT?

INDIGNATION was one of the more obvious components of the extremely complex Western reaction to the killing by the French Assembly of the proposal for a European Defence Community. It was savage indignation among the French advocates of EDC, bitter in Washington, sullen in Bonn and irritated in London. It was justified everywhere. This wicked waste of four crucial years while a majority of French politicians hesitated to say what was always in their hearts, while a strong emotional urge to European unity went cold and stale, and while a Russian diplomatic decline was turned into a rapid revival, can never be excused. Nor can any attempt to disguise the fundamental French responsi- bility for a vast diplomatic mistake. M. Herriot can rise from his bed to assert his absolute opposition to an EDC without Britain and the whole world can be suitably impressed by this dramatic gesture, but it was not Britain that killed EDC. It was the French Assembly, by its refusal to ratify a treaty which was of French origin and was signed in 1952 by a French Foreign Minister.

Any attempt to evade that point can only fray tempers and prolong an unprofitable inquest on an uninteresting corpse. In any case it is not the main point. It is not of fundamental importance who killed EDC, for it was at all times a very imperfect device whether it was considered as a means of expressing the idea of European unity or as a piece of Machinery for incorporating Germans in the Western forces without reviving a German national army. This fact must have been recognised by many of the deputies who voted against it on Monday and it was clearly quite fundamental to the thinking of M. Mendes-France. His whole policy is almost brutally practical. His central object 4s to eliminate all French Commitments which have been undertaken or perpetuated, through habit, or pride or idealism as distinct from immediate practical use. He is a killer of sacred cows, and the slaughter has been encouraged by the fact that so many Frenchmen had Come to hate the sight of those unprofitable animals, the war in Indo-China, the EDC and the status quo in North Africa. The weaknesses of .EDC did not escape his pitiless eye even though he kept up an appearance of neutrality while it waft killed tin Monday. And nobody who has ever thought care- fully about EDC can have failed to see the imperfections of this particular attempt to give an ideal—the ideal of European unity—a concrete form. That is why the question of exact responsibility for the ending of EDC is a secondary matter. It quite possibly would have broken down in any case.

As things are the opportunity to make another and a better. attempt at integrated defence remains, and France remains able to play a leading part. Indeed France may be the stronger for that cutting away of awkward and debilitating commitments which M. Mendes-France has brought about in such a short tinge. That, at any rate, is the object of the exercise. If France does not emerge from this blood-letting saner and stronger and more able to take a positive part in the practical tasks of This Europe then our plight will begin to look desperate. this is probably the crucial point for M. Mendes-France. He roust be certain where to draw the line between a policy of Withdrawal to 'stronger positions and a mere demoralised retreat. From now on there can be no more withdrawals, except just possibly in Morocco. After that France must sttaighten its back and go forward.

That does not mean that France, br any of the other co untries of Western Europe can afford to throw away idealism

altogether, and concentrate entirely on economic and military construction. On the contrary the idea of unity, of which

EDC was an imperfect and uncompleted expression is the most powerful idea to emerge in Western Europe since the war. It must certainly not be pushed aside. But EDC could never have saved it. Still less can NATO, even with Germans inside it. For the Atlantic community is a bigger and even newer idea than European unity. It is strengthened by having Americans and Canadians and Turks in it but it is made less compact. What is more, NATO is almost entirely a military defence organisation, and military defence will not save Europe from Communism in the long run, even though it will hold it up in the short run. In the end Europe will only be saved by determination based on faith, and part of that faith is the idea of unity. And so France, while being practical with M.

Mendes-France must still be idealistic with M. Robert Schuman, M. Spaak, and—let it be faced—Dr. Adenauer. ' And what,' one can hear the Frenchmen asking, ' of Sir Winston Churchill ? ' The question is just. It was Sir Winston, speak- ing as an idealist in Zurich in 1946, who sowed the seed of European unity by pointing to the central need for co-operation between France and Germany. But at the moment he seems to be concentrating on the inclusion of Germany in NATO,

which is by no means the same thing. In keeping EDC at

arm's length the British Government did not kill it. But it will certainly have to strive to keep the idea of European unity .alive. Judgement about the strength of that striving will have to be withheld until there is a British statement of what is to be done now that EDC is dead. That must come soon.

The situation in Western Europe is now more complex and delicate than it has been for a long time. The effect of the resolution passed in the French Assembly on Monday was not only to wipe out the EDC treaty but also automatically to wipe out the Bonn conventions of May, 1952, under which sovereignty was to be given to Western Germany. M. Mendes-

France will now attempt to restore the Bonn conventions as a part of French policy. It is in any case the declared policy

Of the British and United States Governments to find ways of making the Federal Republic sovereign, quite apart from defence arrangements. But it would be entirely unrealistic to

expect the Germans to go back to the qualified sovereignty

proposed more than two years ago in the Bonn Conventions and firmly tied at that time to the EDC treaty. Too much power, prosperity and respect has accrued to the Western Germans for that to be possible now. At the same time a great blow has been struck at the prestige and policies of Dr.

Adenauer by the French abandonment of EDC for his rule to survive without a very strong ' shot-in-the-arm' freely administered by the Western Powers. - Something must be done to make good the loss to large numbers of the most enlightened and responsible West Germans of the possibility of taking part in a European Defence Community. It is very

necessary to point out to the British public that that loss is real and very keenly felt. Some of the most profoundly con- vinced advocates of EDC were Germans. They positively did

not Want, and do not want, a national German army. Their anxiety to avoid it, and to have instead an integrated European force in which the German units could be th6roughly merged, was made all the keener by a sense that the tide of history was set in the direction of a new national German force. The opinion that that tide cannot be turned has been frequently expressed in this journal. It is less freely acknowledged in Western Germany. There is an almost desperate urge there

to escape from it. For militarism in Germany has repeatedly turned to a form of national insanity, and there can be few worse fears than the fear of going mad. . Consequently any suggestion whatever of including a German force in NATO is of the utmost delicacy. Not only is it more repugnant to the French than the proposal for EDC 'which they have already rejected, it is also repugnant to large numbers of good Germans. It is very much to be hoped that the British Government will not make the mistake of pinning all its hopes on the inclusion of .a German national force in NATO. Determination to give Western Europe a strong shield comes first, of course. We need plenty of determination —more than has been shown lately. But still more important in the long run is to have a united Europe behind the shield, and we are unlikely to get that without a more positive, 'a more skilled and a more courageous attitude to European unity than the British Government has shown yet.