Better Than Panic

Winston Churchill looked around the quiet, grey-carpeted chamber, with its red leather chairs and chamois-covered walls, hurriedly built for last week's meeting of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe at Strasbourg. Said he: "It is a wonder that we sit here in our new House of Europe, calmly discussing our plans for the future happiness and concord of our peoples and their moral and cultural ideals. It is a wonder, but at least it is better than getting into a panic."

Explained Churchill: "The Soviet forces . . . outnumber the forces of the Western Union by at least six or seven to one . . . Apart from the establishment of the American bomber base in England, nothing has been done to give any effective protection to our peoples from being subjugated or destroyed by the Russian Communist armies . . . The question which challenges us is: Shall we have the time [to prepare our defenses]? No one can answer that question for certain. To assume that we were too late would be the very madness of despair ... In my judgment we have a breathing space."

The breathing space, thought Churchill, was provided by American superiority in atom bombs. If, while that superiority lasts, "we can create a trustworthy system of defense ... we shall at least have removed the most obvious temptation to those who seek to impose their will by force upon the free democracies." Churchill made it clear that Western Europe's defense must include West Germany.

Churchill asked for more U.S. and British troops on the continent, formally proposed establishment of "a unified European army subject to proper control and acting in full cooperation with the U.S. and Canada." His motion was carried by 89 votes to 5, with 27 delegates abstaining. (Of the five nay votes, one was cast by a British socialist and four by Irish members, who attacked Mr. Churchill for British "aggression" in Ireland.)

No resolution passed at Strasbourg could bind any national government, but Churchill promised that he would place the resolution before the British House of Commons. Other delegates said they would do the same in their own countries.

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