Europe

on the World Today

GERMANY is still the unknown quantity in the perplexing equation of European recovery. This fact has been inescapable since late June, when, with the grudging and uneasy approval of the French Assembly, the Six-Power Pact united the Western Allies behind a political program for the Western zones of the occupied Reich.

To what extent will the Germans themselves cooperate in creating a new Western German government and in making it work? Will doubts about the continuing firmness of American policy, accentuated by the turmoil of the election campaign in the United States, play into the hands of the German Communist minority? Will these political uncertainties beyond the Atlantic fortify renascent German nationalism? Does not the plan sponsored by the AMG and backed by the five members of the Brussels Alliance open the doors to the increasingly vocal Nazi elements in the Western zones?

By filling key industrial positions with unregenerate German cartelists, while easing all official pressure against the persisting concentrations of industrial power in Western Germany, does not Allied policy threaten to alienate the powerful German trade-unions? If that occurs, what will happen to production schedules? To social peace?

Can the Germans take over?

Reports suggest that these questions are far from speculative. In England the Manchester Guardian warns that a study of the Central German Economic Commission should put the West on guard against undue optimism. The Commission, instituted as a preliminary to the creation of a political government for the Western zones, represents the Allies’ first major experiment in handing large Bizonal responsibilities over to the Germans. Its function is to guide, unify, and restore economic forces within the area, lo provide the foundations for a central provisional political regime.

The indictment drawn by the Guardian charges that the Commission has failed to develop a proper sense of responsibility among the Germans who have served on its committees; that its members deal only perfunctorily with their tasks and quit entirely four days out of every seven in order to flee from an uncongenial pseudo capital — though their work concerns the well-being of close to 45,000,000 people. There is no kind of popular support or enthusiasm behind this pilot organ of the future German state. The average German knows nothing about this administration. He has not been consulted about its organization and he has not elected its members by direct vote.

More caustic is the onslaught of the New Statesman on the attitude of the Germans and the policies of the Allies. This British Labor weekly sees, in the system instituted by the United States and Great Britain in Western Germany, “a revival of all the vices and none of the virtues of bourgeois capitalism. Honest profit-taking has been rendered impossible and every incentive to put either industrial or agricultural production on the open market has been systematically removed. . . . Vast fortunes are amassed by a few factory owners and property owners, while the majority live in grinding poverty. There has been no land reform, no decision on the future of heavy industry, and no attempt to confiscate ill-gotten gains acquired either during or after the Hitler regime.”

These criticisms are typical of views held by the political right, left, and center in Britain. The conservative London Economist is as sharp in its criticism as its Liberal and Labor colleagues. In France and the Netherlands, socialist, moderate, and conservative organs, with far less sympathy than some of the British display toward the Germans, present the same findings. All these reports show how difficult it will be to develop a central government for Western Germany.

Danubian conference

The problems of Danubian commerce touch almost every dispute between Russia and the Western powers. The proposal for an Allied conference on the Danube offers an opportunity to make a new effort toward adjusting their differences. Implicit in the matter of traffic on the greatest of Europe’s inland waterways, for instance, is the question of Trieste — the natural trade outlet for Austria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia to the Adriatic. Involved also is the future of Austriawhose attendance at the conference Russia has at last conceded, albeit with restrictions. Ructions in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Berlin do not alter these hard facts.

Probably the most important point about the conference, however, is that it will be concerned with the flow of trade between Eastern and Western Europe over this waterway. This has direct bearing upon the prospects for the European Recovery Program and the economic future of both Eastern and Western Germany.

The Danube conference presents the finest opening diplomacy has had since the deadlock of the great powers began in 1946. Russia and her satellites, after the experiences of the past year, are keenly conscious of the part which a revival of trade with Western Europe can play in speeding up the industrial expansion they sorely need. Since their many conferences on the aid program began last summer, the sixteen ERP states also appreciate the importance to themselves of Eastern European materials and markets.

These three governments themselves, however, display great caution on the subject. Their leaders point out that their own coalition is in an experimental stage; that it is still facing grave difficulties despite the fact that the three member states have many things in common culturally, economically, and geographically. Economic union they do not expect, even under these favorable circumstances, until 1950 at the earliest. All three are feeling their way circumspectly toward greater coördination of tax policies, common tariff standards, and other coöperative objectives.

Both Belgium and the Netherlands have begun to encounter strong domestic opposition in this matter. Belgian farmers fear the productive capacity of Dutch agriculture. Belgian brewers are alarmed over prospective price difficulties. The Dutch program for expanding industrialization is being eyed askance by some in Belgium, Europe’s most intensively industrialized nation, where concern about domestic markets is apparent. These difficulties are by no means insuperable. Nevertheless, they are a warning against undue speed in forming a European customs union.

Danubia today is a closed preserve. Pledges in treaties subscribed to by all the Big Four powers last year provide for the eventual opening of the great traffic artery of Southern Europe for general European commerce free of discrimination, under common rules governing navigation. Here is a problem that reasonable concessions can solve. Unreasonable pursuit of fixed ideas will injure every nation concerned without altering the present setup of power throughout the area concerned.

Customs union for Europe?

Preoccupation with the creation of a German central government and with the opening of the Danube conference has not weakened European interest in arguments about a customs union and a European federation. Yet neither of these is in the cards for the discernible future. These projects are important rather as manifestations of the will to coöperate than as evidence that a United States of Europe is in the offing.

In the realm of economic coöperation, the hesitancy of the European states about development of a customs union shows how the wind is blowing. The Benelux countries — Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg — by their coöperative pact have provided a rallying point around which most champions of a customs union gather, both in America and Europe.

Political realities persist

The truth is that the old witch of sovereignty hagrides this question still, just as it does the proposal for a federated Europe. Britain illustrates the point most clearly. A customs union would be, of course, primarily economic; but Britain’s relationship with her overseas Empire and her Commonwealth partners immediately qualifies her approach to such a plan for Western Europe. Economics, unfortunately, involves politics in the long run. And politics involves sovereignty in a very short run thereafter. A customs union would require substantial unity of financial policies; but Britain has the sterling area to think about.

The idea of a federated Europe runs into similar difficulties in the realm of political realities. The American Union, European critics point out, is not a suitable model, nor yet a valid precedent. The United States evolved from a homogeneous people having common experience of political principle and common traditions, cultural and social. Also, it is based upon a careful division of power and authority between the member states and the central government, under a written constitution. How could such a constitution be framed for a union of states differing in language, in cultural traditions, in customs and race groupings? Who would write such a constitution? Without it, how could a federated Europe exist?