The effect in Europe has been great. All Europeans have from the first been eager for Britain to be associated with the European Community. In particular, many people who have feared a Franco-German tete-atete feel that Britain's near presence is a guarantee against a resurgence of the old mistrusts. Britain's new attitude is itself a great advance toward the achievement of European unity.
It is this silent revolution in men's minds, this "fire under the ashes," that has turned the failure of E.D.C. from the death of European unity— which it could have been—into a source of political lessons for future action. Since 1954 the emphasis has been on economic rather than on political integration, as at the time of the E.D.C. I learned that it was not enough to work for European integration from within governments. Public opinion, above all organized political opinion, must be mobilized to prepare the way for the governments.
At the end of 1954, I resigned from the High Authority to form the Action Committee for a United States of Europe. The political and labor leaders of the committee together agree on the lines of policy they wish their Governments to follow. They have, in the last year, worked contsantly to reinforce the "new European drive" launched by the six governments in July, 1955, with the emphasis on, first, a European Atomic Community (Euratom) and, second, a general European market.
They have introduced the same resolution, requesting the governments to negotiate and ratify Euratom quickly, in all the six Parliaments and carried it by substantial majorities. They want Euratom to undertake a European power program (now made possible by President Eisenhower's offer to the world of twenty tons of fissionable materials) and to exercise the same control as the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to insure that those materials are used for peaceful purposes only. It is along these lines that the governments are in fact negotiating the treaty.
The Action Committee for a United States of Europe has indeed been of great importance since the Suez crisis began in making opinion aware of the tremendous energy gap which Europe faces in the coming twenty years and in pointing the way to overcoming it as rapidly as possible. The six governments have now, on the committee's suggestion, appointed "three Wise Men" whose essential job will be to propose the targets of atomic power production—far beyond anything conceived only three months ago—which Europe, united, can and must achieve. Atomic
power is the field in which Europe can do spectacularly more, united, than the separate countries by themselves. Our aim is to save Europe years in the development of atomic power for peaceful purposes.
When I look to the future, I feel considerable optimism. After six years, we have come a long way. The European Coal and Steel Community exists. A treaty on Euratom should be signed soon. A common market is in prospect. And Britain has shown her interest in associating with it. In such a vast enterprise as the uniting of Europe, there are bound to be troubles ahead. But greater troubles have already been overcome.
It is certain that today European unity is increasingly recognized to be less a technical problem than one of political will and, on the whole, the political will is growing. Despite appearances, the Suez crisis, by underlining the limitations of the power of the European nations separately and the fact that they are all subject to similar pressures, is likely finally to increase that political will.
A strong and prosperous United States of Europe, delivered from fear, can powerfully contribute to the cohesion of the Free World and to our common power to insure peace and progress. But the unification of Europe is not simply an aim for ourselves. It is a method with wider applications in an age when fanatical nationalisms are being born at the very time that other societies—and far more mature ones—are finding nationalisms inadequate for their needs.
Europe's nations, faced with the prospect of decline like the citystates of ancient Greece because they are too small, are making one of the century's greatest experiments in government in their effort to break the restraints of the past. It may well be through this new kind of federalism —a federalism that rejects nationalist excess because it was precisely the disastrous results of such excess which made it necessary—that the twentieth century will make one of its greatest contributions to the civilization of succeeding generations.