Smelting Unity

The iron was French, the limestone Belgian, the coke came from Holland and Germany. Yet the stream of molten metal, tapped last week by Italian workmen in the Luxembourg town of Esch, was steel that belonged to Europe--solid and symbolic evidence that the Schuman Plan dream is at last reality. Six nations, producing 20% of the world's steel, would henceforth pool their outputs, eliminate tariffs, surrender control (but not ownership) of their basic industries to a supranational High Authority, headed by a dapper Frenchman who hopes to forge not merely an industrial colossus, but a new U.S. of Europe. "What we are doing with our own hands here at home in Europe is the greatest revolution of our history," said Jean Monnet last week. "The pooling of coal and steel is but a beginning; the union of the peoples of Europe is the end."

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