EUROPEAN RECOVERY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 517, 20 May 1949, Page 15

EUROPEAN RECOVERY

THE WEST AT BAY. By Barbara Ward, Allen and Unwin, London. Ené§lish price, 12/6. ARBARA WARD has the knowledge, in history and economics, which enables her to explain. the reasons for Europe’s decline and the conditions for recovery. She sees clearly that the issue to-day is not-as many Americans _believe it to be-an. eventual return" to "normalcy," ‘but the emergence of a new way of life, strong enough to prevent the spread of Communism. Western Europe can survive only if its economic systems can be integrated. American aid, the most generous gesture of its kind in history, will not equal 5 per cent. of national production by the. Six teen Nations in the period covered by the Paris Report: it is in Europe itself that the big effort must be made. "American aid is like the last cog in a complicated machine," writes Miss Ward. "Its absence. may bring the wheels to a standstill, but its presence

does not guarantee that they will grind on. For that. they need their own lubrication and their own power.’’. The interesting fact, revealed in a brilliant analysis of economic and politi--cal policy, is that the Americans are contributing to a recovery which, if successful, will establish the type of society to which in theory and habit they have been consistently opposed. Economic integration means control: there must be regulation and co-ordination if wasteful overlapping of effort is to be avoided. As Miss Ward points out, Western Europe is becoming the New World. The Americans may not fully understand the implications of Marshall aid: sthey may believe too easily that economic assistance will. bring back the conditions for unimpeded trading. But they are committed to a policy which has a sort of historic necessity. Closer association between the western nations, in trade and defence, may promote the federalisation which some thinkers advocated: during the war as the most rational way ‘of overcoming the European dilemma. Their mistake was in believing that a system of this kind could be established by. drawing up a constitution. The real nature of integtation is to be found in trial and error and practical co-operation; and the nations have been brought to it, not by intellectual conviction, but by immediate problems in trade and strategy. The attempt may fail, for it implies a gradual curtailment of sovereignty. There is, however, no other way of meeting the challenge of Communism. Miss Ward has written ‘a valuable book: and the surprising fact is that, in spite of the. complexity of her material, she was able to produce it in six weeks,

M.H.

H.