Evening star., 1950-02-15
Needed: Some First Steps

good example of the gulf that exists
between the ideal and the practical can be
found in the persuasive argument just made by
former Undersecretary of State Will L. Clayton
in behalf of welding the United States and the
other Western democraces into a great new
political and economic federation
AS advocated by the Atlantic Union Commit
tee of which Mr. Clayton is vice president, such
organization of states undoubtedly would be so
strong as to make an attack on it by any outside
nation extremely improbable. Certainly in
espousing it before subcommittee of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Clayton has
not exaggerated its warpreventing potentialities.
For with its 400 million or more people, with its
highly advanced and integrated economies, with
its free trade and with it's overall unity of
government, it would be gigantic area of pros
pering democracy capable of insuring its own
security, inspiring the rest of the world to emulate
it, and thus virtually guaranteeing an enduring
peace.
Despite all that can be said in its favor,
however, the proposed federation will almost
certainly remain in the realm of the ideal for
long time to come, perhaps forever AS of
today, at any rate, practical considerations leave
no room for doubt that Mr.. Clayton and the
Atlantic Union Committee will fail in their effort
to have the President call convention in which
the United States, Britain, Canada, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg would
strive to lay the groundwork for prompt polit
ical and economic merger of the democratic
nations of the West. Wholly apart from Amer
lean opinion, the simple fact is that opinion
abroad-at least at the governmental LEVELS as
yet nowhere near ready for such revolutionary
change.
Thus, although many western Leadership
Guiding Winston Churchill and Prime Minister
Attlee-have repeatedly warned that Europe must
federate or perish and although special twelve
nation organization exists to promote the uniflca-
ton of the free part of the continent little concrete
progress has been made so far to that end.
Europeans as a whole, with all their historic
differences and clashing interests and sovereign
ties, have wilderness of obstacles to clear away
before they can unite politically. Indeed, up to
now, despite the proddngs of the Marshall Plan,
they have been unsuccessful in achieving any
substantial integration even in the less difficult
economic field.
In the circumstances if the Europeans them
selves thus are far from union, it seems imprac-
tical in the extreme to expect that real headway
can be made now toward having the United
States unite with them in a political and eco
nomic federation. To say this, of course, is not
to suggest that such proposal is completely
outlandish. 1t is merely to suggest that at this
particular stage the hard realities are against
any near-futures realization. of merger and
that. the free, world will therefore be better off
If it concentrates its energies making success
of less sweeping undertakings like the Marshall
Plan and the Atlantic Pact.
In sum, although it may be theoretically sound
and desirable, an Atlantic Union just does not
seem possible right now Before the free Western
nations can run toward an al-out federation,
they must first learn to walk toward it, and the
beginning steps must be made by the Europeans
in such fields as economic integration. Without
that, how can there be progress toward the
larger objective?