Early Federasts
Sir: As a former eurocrat I enjoyed Ian Buruma's article, 'Britain against the Federasts' (13 April) and agree fully with his Portuguese driver that money is mainly the inspiration for what goes on around the rond-point Schuman: without these activi- ties Belgium, for example, might be some- what less prosperous. I also agree that euro-enthusiasm is for many Europeans stimulated after visits to the United States and Japan: we need to unite to compete economically and to promote our distinc- tive civilisation.
However, it is surely not true that in 1940 the idea of France and Britain merg- ing into one nation 'didn't appeal much to either Churchill or de Gaulle'. On the contrary, on 13 June 1940 Churchill, in a message to M. Reynaud which had the approval of the War Cabinet, said: 'We take this opportunity of proclaiming the indissoluble union of our two peoples and
LETTERS
of our two Empires' (The Second World War, Vol. II, p.165). Three days later it was General de Gaulle himself who sug- gested to Churchill that formal proclama- tion of such a union be drafted round the table at a War Cabinet meeting. Chur- chill's first instinct had been against the idea, but he came round to it and contri- buted to the drafting. He then showed it to General de Gaulle who 'read it with an air of unwonted enthusiasm' and took upon himself to telephone it to Reynaud. As we know, the French cabinet was predomi- nantly defeatist and rejected it (ibid, Vol II, pp.182-4).
I can't help feeling that Paul-Henri Spook's riposte to Anthony Eden's remark that he felt 'in my bones that we are not European' must be apocryphal. I was present at the Paris Peace Conference chaired by Spaak, and I served with the Nato Council throughout the period during which Spaak was its secretary-general, and he did not strike me as someone much given to witticisms. In any case, whereas bones might be 'a funny place to have thinking', that is not what Eden apparently said, and bones are certainly quite a usual place to have feeling, as I a sufferer from arthritis can surely vouch!
John Peek
Les Broches, Chambonas, 07140 Les Vans, France
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