THE PLAN IN ITS WORLD SETTING

Qu estions of the week
by Michael de Its Bedogrere
PROBABLY the initial vision of the Schuman Plan has already been destroyed. It is likely to be replaced by a long series of conversations, conferences and bargainings, of the type with which the post-War world has become so familiar. which in the end will only achieve some minor adjustment in intra• European economic relations.
Should this turn out to be the case—and we huge indeed that we are false prophets in the matter— the fault must largely rest with the nature of the reception to the Plan given by this country.
It was precisely in order tcoavoid another disappointment that the
Plan was suddenly launched in a novel and imaginative form. Clearly it was hoped in France that the unexpected visionof a permanent reconciliation between France and Germany on the hasis of solid common economic interests would for once stimulate all the thinking politicians of Europe into a fresh state of mind.
Because of this it was essential to obtain a general adherence in principle to the new method of finding ways and means of accomplishing something absolutely necessary to
civi isa t ion's survival instead of continuing to hack one's way through a jungle growing more impenetrable as further painful steps are taken.
Many of our countrymen undoubtedly sensed the quality of this fresh initiative because they are at least sub-consciously aware of the real dimensions of the world problem to be faced.
Alas. our responsible politicians. entangled as their minds are with administrative and party political details, have utterly failed to see the Plan in its full perspective.
They would appear at times to be almost unaware of the great Movements which determine human destiny, even when those movements are fraught with immense and immediate peril for everything they seek to defend and prop up—even when it is precisely those movements which are eaUsing the difficulties they so unsuccessfully and unimaginatively seek to tackle.
World disillusi OH LET us try then to stand back for a
moment and get something like a whole view of the world situation which the French initiative has sought at least to nieet by novel and decisive methods.
Spiritual and economic unrest on an unprecedented scale lie at the root of our whole trouble. Our generation, which, like every generation, derives its philosophic outlook largely front the views and aspire-. lions of the generation which 'went before it,, has been educated by every means of modern publicity to expect a fair material deal for all people.
In a few countries, including our own, something like this has been achieved, though even so in conditions very different from the original liberal hope.
Elsewhere the best that has taken place has only been sufficient to whet the appetites of the minority of beneficiaries and increase the envy of the majority who are scarcely better off than they ever were.
This widespread disillusion has inevitably created a spiritual malaise to which at the moment, through the decay qf any religious faith socially and publicly held, the only satisfaction lies in the hope of a revolutionary new social order. Hence the strength of Communism. Hence, too, the strength yesterday of Nazism and Fascism. Nazism and Fascism were militarily defeated and forcibly burnt out. Communism, under Soviet direction, has been so travestied and deformed that one might well have expected it to defeat itself.
But partly through the force of its own tyranny and partly because the general spiritual dissatisfaction ran so deep, Communism remains a dire menace, not only through its Soviet leadership and power but also because it still, in spite of everything, attracts the disillusioned outside the Soviet orbit.
It is a terrifying reflection that world Communism. had it recognised fundamental human freedom and been organised on a more genuine socialist basis, might well by this time have overrun Europe and threatened America.
SUCH' roughly, were the main forces governing mankind on its emergence from a second world war,
What has happened since?
We can count five chief political factors.
First, America, the sole beneficiary of the war (apart from the Soviet), artificially props up from across the Atlantic with its atom bomb and its money what is left of European civilisation. Two, the Soviet has split Europe in two, identified itself with Corntnimisin, and with its iron discipline and the help of Eastern Europe's production recovered sufficiently to become the world's immediate threat both militarily and through its ideology which still possesses, strange as it may seem. a strong attraction.
Three, the European countries of the At lentils seaboard, with America's help, have slowly staged a partial economic recovery which however for the most part leaves its problem of unemployment and destitution, and consequently still feeds the mate'rial and spititual disillusion of our times.
Four, Germany, the key to any full European recovery, is split into two separate halves, one typifying the advantages and disadvantages of the Soviet way, the other the advantages and disadvantages (in exaggerated degree) of Western freedom. Five, the great productive reservoirs of the natural wealth on which our civilisation and standard of living absolutely depend are left to become the breeding ground of Communism and consequently the prey of the Soviet, Where--as in the case of Chinathey have not already been conquered.
I.Tneertain help
PURPOSELY, we have left Great
Britain out because in a way she stands apart, facing this world situation from a key position and with an enormous potentiality of leadership to save civilisation, yet herself perilously Independent on the hazards of world trade and prices.
The situation is clearly desperate, so long as we are content to drift along, trying painfully to fit small jig-saw puzzle pieces into a pattern nine-tenths of which is ruined.
Against the profound material malaise and consequent spiritual disillusion which Soviet Russia has ruthlessly seized upon, dividing Europe and dividing Germany and threatening the sources of Western wealth we are only able to oppose America's wealth and America's atomic military power, both of them very doubtful and dangerous assets. The sanction of the atom bomb is world war which can only end the world as we know it—and Europe first of all. And America's wealth, apart floral its being a constant reminder of the causes of world disillusion, is tied up to capitalist principles of national and private ownership which not only make its future uncertain, but make its world utilisation dependent on a trade and a lending which cannot be balanced according to capitalist ule.%.
What can we control?
THIS is the kind of infinitely precarious background against which the British Government—and,
we doubt not, the main Conservative body of this country—preposes to substitute for the imaginative lead of M. Schuman the principle that we cannot commit ourselvea to anything which we cannot control. What—as things stand—can we control? Communist aggression? Yes, with America's atom bomb. Communist ideology ? The future course of the German people ? Unemployment in France , and Italy 7 America's wealth and its future '? Cominunist infiltration into the reservoirs of the world's natural wealth ?
None of these can we in any way control. Yet it is these things which must control, and in the end destroy us, unless we use prepared 10 take the risks necessary to begin righting the balance.
We do not of course suggest that the Schuman Plan is of the size to deal with the world problem, though if it could lead to the real linking of Germany uith Western Europe aim vastly important concrete step forward would have been taken.
It is enough to realise the sort of real background against which Britain says "No " to the first constructive plan for the integration, political and economic, of Western civilisation since the war.
Yet because of our singular position and our potential leadership we should have been the first to set in motion the large ideas which would make for decisive reform and reconstruction in the Western world.