"The Time Is Ripe"

At first the packed House of Commons was disappointed. Listening M.P.s had to remind themselves that Ernie Bevin was making history. He read his speech from typescript, too rapidly, sometimes gobbling his words. Afterwards, in the lobbies, Laborites agreed that "Ernie was bloody awful" in his delivery. But the history was in what he said, not in how he said it.

He began with Yalta: "The solution arrived at . . . was looked upon by His Majesty's Government at that time as a sensible compromise . . . [but] the Communist process goes ruthlessly on. . . . You have only to look at your maps. . . ." With a sort of elephantine perversity, Bevin droned over the old ground of Greece, Trieste and Lake Success. His audience fidgeted. He said: " [The] policy on the part of the Soviet Union [is] to use every means in their power to get Communist control in Eastern Europe and . . . in the West as well." What did the British government propose now?

"A Spiritual Union." Then Bevin gave them the phrase they were waiting for: "Western Union." It was a milestone in postwar history. Bevin explained it: "I believe the time is ripe for a consolidation of Western Europe."

Some of Ernie's oldtime fire came back as he outlined the steps to be taken. Western Union would begin with Britain and France. Then economic and political understandings would be sought with Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. Later (if the April elections there go the right way), "the new Italy" might be brought in, as well as Portugal. There was no hard & fast schedule, no thought of immediate federation or a United States of Europe. More than the western edge of Europe was involved. Bevin pointed to the British Commonwealth, to the overseas territories of Britain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Portugal. And Bevin said what the union could not be--a system for dominating the smaller states. Said Bevin: "It must be a spiritual union . . . more of a brotherhood and less of a rigid system."

"Britons Are Europeans." M.P.s knew, as did almost every Briton by this week, that their Ernie had indeed made or confirmed a historic change. A main tradition of British foreign policy had been to stand aloof from Europe, and to use Britain's weight to keep two opposing continental groups in a balance where British power could tip the scales. Bevin still believed that "no one nation should dominate Europe." But he added: "The old-fashioned conception of the balance of power should be discarded. . . ."

In other words, the British were not trying to set the western continental countries against the eastern. They were joining Western Europe.

Cabled TIME'S London Bureau Chief John Osborne: "Perhaps Bevin's words seemed flat to his British hearers because so much of his history had already been made. Part of the profound change that has overtaken Britons in the last year has been the growing awareness that they are Europeans, no longer islanded in glorious and superior detachment. Recognition of Russia as Britain's enemy and European Communism as the enemy's instrument has proceeded apace for many months; the process is now well nigh complete."

"Will There Be War?" For Winston Churchill, it was an occasion of triumph. He had lived to hear the Labor government, which had once jeered him down, come to the realization of Soviet peril which he had voiced at Fulton, 22 months before. He had seen it also follow his lead for Western unity. But he was not quite satisfied. He stomped out to the lobby after Bevin's speech, grumping: "I want something bigger, something bigger." Next day, before packed galleries (Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip had come to listen), Churchill produced it: a proposal for one last bid for "lasting settlement" with Russia. He was not up to his oratorical form, but grim earnestness was in his words. Said he:

"Will there be war? . . . The best chance of avoiding war is, in accord with the other Western democracies, to bring matters to a head with the Soviet government . . . to arrive at a lasting settlement. There is certainly enough for the interests of all if such a settlement could be reached. . . . Even this method . . . would not guarantee that war would not come; but I believe it would give the best chance of preventing it, and that, if it came, we should have the best chance of coming out of it alive."

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