ABSTRACT
The movement for the federation of Western Europe is often misunderstood, particularly in Great Britain and the United States. We tend, and Americans still more so, to think of it in pragmatic terms, to argue as to its value as a measure of military security or as a means of reproducing in the Old World some of the economic advantages of a large single market. There is a tendency to assume that the motive power behind the movement is similarly rational and the product of relatively recent developments. The over-simplification of political issues prevalent in America makes a large-scale change of this kind particularly appealing. At last, they feel, those Europeans are showing some kind of sense; at last they are willing to forget the past feuds and wars; at last they are beginning to behave like sensible Americans: the Council of Europe is something like the great Constitutional Convention; Strasbourg is a modern Philadelphia; and Dr Adenauer and M.Schuman are the Hamilton and Madison of the twentieth century.
