Federation, Perhaps

Ever since the war's outbreak British idealists have talked and written about the kind of warproof Europe they want to see set up after the war. Generally, their ideas have boiled down to a European federation calculated to wipe out fierce commercial rivalries, customs frontiers, expensive armies. Across the Channel in France, political thought is rarely so idealistic. Many Frenchmen think of after-the-war in terms of territorial gains, of a Germany split up into 20 or more harmless States as it was a century ago, of an enlarged France holding both sides of the Rhine.

Yet last week, none other than French Premier Edouard Daladier, in a speech on the French military budget before the Senate, spoke a good word for federation. The French and British Empires, he declared, have permanently "dismissed national egoism" and have come to an agreement on community of action "whose consequences are incalculable." The Premier continued:

"This agreement has been enlarged by the distribution on an equitable basis of all common charges, and by the establishment of complete solidarity between our two monies, the franc and the pound sterling. This Franco-British Union is open to all. ... I [can] conceive that the new Europe should have a wider organization. . . . Commercial exchange must be multiplied, and perhaps federative bonds envisaged between the various European States." In the French military budget it was estimated that the cost of running the war during 1940 would be $5,931,000,000, to be raised by a series of loans. First loans will be spent on planes, tanks and three 30,000-ton battleships. "We must push mechanical construction to the extreme." keynoted the Premier, "for in modern war the machine is master."

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