Western Defence
The three main strands in the complicated subject of West Euro- pean defence are at last beginning to run together. First, the dis- cussions between American, British and French Foreign Ministers' deputies on the German contribution to European defence have reached a compromise—the proposed formation of German brigade groups without German political control—which allows more general discussions of Atlantic defence to go forward, even though it is far from overcoming all difficulties in France and in Germany. Second, meetings of the military committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Powers and of the Atlantic Council of Deputies have been held in London this week as a preliminary to the session of the full Atlantic Council in Brussels next week, at which the broad Atlantic Treaty defence plans may be approved and a Supreme Commander. probably General Eisenhower, appointed. And third, the American, British and French Foreign Offices are said to have hit on a formula Which will enable them to reply to the Russian invitation to a Four- Power Conference on the demilitarisation of Germany. The formula is that neither the Russian suggestion of an agenda based on the resolutions of the Prague conference, nor the tentative Western idea of an agenda consisting of a recital of all outstanding differences should be adopted, but that the agenda should be settled through diplomatic channels, on the sole condition that it is not confined to Germany alone. The issue which links the three strands is, of course, that of German rearmament, and a very tenuous link it is at the moment. The Spofford compromise, which is the name thrust upon the proposal for German brigade groups, has been received 1n Germany with something like derision. At the same time M. Schuman, has chosen to assert that French acceptance of the com- promise does not involve a weakening of his Government's insistence on the Pleven Plan for a European army, under a European Defence Minister, or even of its belief that the Schuman Plan will have to be accepted before a European army can be set up. This is all very ominous. A French policy of delays, or a German policy of hard bargaining, could handicap the organisation of Western defence even though it has obviously not brought the plans of the Atlantic Powers to a full stop.
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