More than Monogamy

The meeting started ten minutes late. (Some people thought it was really ten years late, or ten centuries.) In a solemn procession led by parliamentary messengers, who looked like headwaiters except for their chains of office, walked France's mastiff-faced Edouard Herriot. He climbed the rostrum, opened the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe.

"All creation, even the birth of a child, entails some risk," he said. "The Assembly will be what your determination makes it."

Rambunctious Rebellion. The Assembly last week showed that it had determination. Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak had relinquished public office at home just in time to be elected first president of the Assembly. His first act was to call for a short, practicable agenda. The Assembly rambunctiously rebelled against the Committee of Ministers, which has power to tell the Assembly what it can and cannot talk about. Cried Winston Churchill: "Why all this interference with the freedom of discussion?"

By week's end the Assembly won the ministers' approval of a nine-point agenda (six points more than the ministers first proposed), including "human rights & fundamental freedoms."

The delegates at Strasbourg were all shades, from blond Scandinavians through coffee-colored Turks to the two Senegalese members of the French delegation. Cracked a newsman: "About the only thing they have in common is monogamy."

Election of a Brave. Actually they had other things in common: fear of Russia, fear (in some cases) of a resurgent Germany, fear of economic collapse. They also shared a vague pride in being citizens of what Churchill calls the famous continent, Europe. The minor squabbles between British Laborites and Tories at the conference showed clearly that the representatives of sovereign nations could act not as members of a British (or French or Belgian) bloc, but as Europeans with individual convictions.

When Churchill battled Herbert Morrison over a relatively unimportant issue (whether or not Laborite William Whiteley should be elected to an Assembly vice presidency), the world saw an important spectacle: the political tussles of something very like an international parliament. In the corridor outside the assembly hall, in plain view of all Europe, Churchill grabbed the lapels of Liberal Lord Layton, whom he backed against Whiteley. "If you rat on me now in spite of our 40 years' friendship," hissed Churchill, "I will never speak to you again." Tory delegates patrolled the corridors, lobbying for Layton. Two Danes asked in French whether this man Layton really deserved their vote, and a British Tory replied suavely: "Ah, mais oui, c'est un brave--he's a good guy."

Le brave was elected.

Sacred Loyalty. At week's end, Churchill addressed 20,000 people in Strasbourg's main square, after being resoundingly bussed by a young Strasbourgeoise. "Prenez garde, je vais parler fran-c,ais," warned Churchill ("Look out! I'm going to speak in French").

Said he: "There is no difficulty in reconciling the prime and sacred loyalty one owes to one's country with [a] wide sense of European comradeship ... It is not against any race or nation that we range ourselves. It is against tyranny in all its forms . . . We must rise to a level above the passions which have laid all Europe in ruins ..."

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