Risks

The bold proposal by France's Robert Schuman to pool French and German coal & steel industries (TIME, May 22) produced a burst of hope and revived, with a fresh urgency, the ideal of Western Europe's integration. But as the West set about examining the Schuman idea a little more closely, it also made a lot of people extremely nervous.

Most nervous were the British. Last week, after much tentative toe-dipping, Britain finally took a plunge and decided to join the new payments union of the European Marshall Plan countries; but Britain still held aloof from the Schuman Plan (see below).

In the U.S., too, there were some misgivings. One was that, under the Schuman Plan, West European industry might grow so strong as to be entirely independent of the U.S., and that as a result Western Europe would be more likely to play a "third force" role of neutrality between Russia and the West.

Such plausibility as the argument had ignored the fact that a Western Europe completely dependent on the U.S. would be of little help in resisting Communism. To be economically and politically strong enough to resist Communism, Western Europe would obviously also have to be free to stand on its own feet, to do as it pleased. It was reasonable to assume that what a strong, free Europe would decide to do would be to fight Communism, not for the sake of the U.S., but for its own sake. If that assumption involved for the U.S. the risk of a neutral Europe, the risk was not as great as the risk of a weak and divided Western Europe.

The French themselves faced risks in proposing the Schuman Plan. Many Frenchmen (including the owners of the French steel industry) feared that, under the Schuman Plan, Germany would outproduce and outsell France, and thus regain a huge military advantage. France, overcoming her traditional fears, had in effect told the West that, in order to win, it was necessary to take a chance.

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