"It Will Be"

In the gilded, mirrored chambers of Pall Mall's Marlborough House, the leaders of Britain's Commonwealth gathered this week. They came to discuss an issue that will permanently affect their nations' future: Britain's bid for membership in Europe's Common Market.

The conference comes at a particularly sensitive time. Britain's negotiating team left Brussels last month without the conclusive outline of terms that the government had hoped to present to this week's conference. Thus it could offer little in the way of solid assurance to the Commonwealth nations that will be hardest hit by Britain's admission to Europe: New Zealand. Australia and Canada (in that order of vulnerability), whose economies are heavily reliant on tariff-free exports of meat, grain and dairy products to the British market, from which they may be excluded by 1970. Britain's toughest opposition came from the French, whose own farmers are already hard pressed to unload their high-cost surpluses. Even in Britain a Daily Mail national poll showed 52% were against British membership, compared with 42% two months ago. Nevertheless, Britain's giant Trades Union Congress voted overwhelmingly against rejection of the Common Market last week.

"We Have Stood Fast." Only four months ago Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was saying that Britain would not join unless Europe made "the way easy for us" (see cartoon). Now, as Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer hobnobbed in West Germany, it was plain that the road would be at best a rocky one. An outcry against Common Market membership from Prime Ministers of the "Old Dominions"--Canada's John Diefenbaker. New Zealand's Keith Holyoake. Australia's Robert Menzies--could bring Tory fortunes crashing. Menzies was notably less belligerent than he had been earlier this year, saying: "We must strike a happy medium between the insistence on our own position and recognition of the rights of other people." Holyoake, whose country sells 92% of its farm produce to Britain, worked gently on Britain's sense of fair play. "Over 120 years," he declared, "New Zealand has looked to Britain in times of emergency. We have stood fast with Britain when she was sorely pressed."

"Tough Moments Ahead." While the Eurocrats go hammer and tongs at the task of welding the new Europe (see WORLD BUSINESS), the Commonwealth still must make the emotional and intellectual adjustments that come harder than economic concessions. As they planned for a new round of negotiations, starting next month, most Common Market statesmen sympathetically acknowledged the obstacles in the way of British membership. Shrugged one diplomat in Brussels last week: "There will be tough moments ahead." He added: "But it will be. It will be."

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