WEST EUROPE UNION, ON EMPIRE LINES

Grey River Argus, 17 September 1948, Page 5

WEST EUROPE UNION, ON EMPIRE LINES

Mr Bevins Suggestion (Rec. 10.35) LONDON, Sept. 16 , Kt. Hon. E. Bevin, in his House of Commons speecn, said tnat the British Government haa been asked to call an assembly to draft a constitution for Western Europe, but consti-tutiori-maKing raised a whole lot oi problems. * Britain had no written constitution, ano there would be tne problem of dove-tailing it with other constitutions which were written. He had studied some of the proposals put, rorward, but they would not stand the test of examination. His view was that ‘-hey shouiu nrst consult the British Commonwealth itself, and he could not see why the Government was criticised, for that. Intricacies of Western Europe were such that they had better proceed on the same principle of the association oi the nations as in that on the British Commonwealth. Britain had got to be in both places. She had to be, and must remain, the centre of the British Commonwealth, and she must be European. That was a very difficult role to play. The right way to approach this Western Union problem, Mr Bevin said, was step by step—by treaty and agreement—and, by taking on certain thing which they could do collectively. He thought that it might be possible to establish some kind of an. assembly to deal with the practical things which they had accomplished as governments. But they must not try to put the roof on before they had built the house. The, British Government’s policy was, at it began, to continue this day-to-day endeavour through the sixteen nations which they had now brought together, and through the British Commonwealth. If they could get an association of nations comprising what were now the states of Western Europe, ourselves and the Commonwealth, then a force for peace and equality and equilibrium could be established which ought to make for peace for generations to come.