WEAKNESS SEEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1942, Page 4

WEAKNESS SEEN

IN SCHEMES OF EUROPEAN FEDERATION. VIEWS OF BELGIAN MINISTER. A European federation will not bring peace to Europe and is nothing more than an “illusion” fraught with danger, in the opinion of Frans van Cauwelaert one-time Belgian Minister of State, a . correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor” wrote from New York recently. Instead, Europe's need for security and independence, can best be met when when the war is over through the setting up of an international organisation whose stability and authority are assured by the United States and Great Britain, Mr van Cauwelaert declared in an article in “Belgium,” in New York,” a semi-monthly magazine printed by the Belgian Press Association. “Such an organisation docs not exclude the possibility of agreements, alliances, regional federations,” he said. “Poland and Czechoslovakia, Greece and Yugoslavia have taken an initiative which can only be commended. Belgium and Holland -would do well to follow their example. “There are in Europe a certain number of associations endorsed by both nature and history. Let us begin with them. Even they demand a great deal of wisdom and a serious effort of good will. Past experiences should make us modest on this score. Solidarity has, alas, played only a secondary role in the history of nations, even among the small ones where it should be most in evidence. It is not forbidden us to think that after the tragic experiences of this new war, the peoples of Europe may be not inclined toward such fellowship. But it would endanger the security and the fruitfulness of these regional associations to incorporate them at the outset into a continental Europe system.” Mr van Cauwelaert held that sponsors of the theory of organisation by continents “are not specific in their intentions,” and that “many of them show a supreme indifference to the fate of the small nations.” The continental plan, he added —especially the organisation of Europe into an independent federation—“has been fostered by those who are at present our enemies and by those who, consciously or not, have been their accomplices or their agents. That is my chief reason for warning my compatriots against these tendencies.”