A U.S.E.?

In many a European mind the yearning was there, deep and ancient. If the partitions of Europe were dissolved, if a union of nations were achieved--might there not be more peace and plenty than the living could remember? Especially after the wars, when weakened nations struggled to rebuild, the idea grew.

In Britain this winter, Winston Churchill led 21 thoughtful fellow countrymen* in a manifesto. "If Europe is to survive, it must unite," they declared. "Since for the moment governments find it difficult to take the initiative ... let men of good will in all countries take counsel together that Europe may arise."

Last week, Churchill's summons had a response in the U.S. Eighty-one Americans, including Historian James Truslow Adams, John W. Davis, Major General William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, Senator Carl A. Hatch, and General Electric's Philip D. Reed, called for U.S. support for a U.S.E. Their declaration, assembled by handsome, black-haired, internationalist Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (son of an Austrian father and a Japanese mother), said: "The alternative ... is a Continent permanently divided . . . by an artificial and arbitrary line of barbed wire. . . "

In the U.S. Congress a short & simple resolution was pending, introduced by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana: "That the Congress favors the creation of a United States of Europe within the framework of the United Nations."

* Among them: Philosopher Bertrand Russell; London Publisher Lord Lay ton; the Very Reverend W. .R. Matthews, Dean of St. Paul's; the Right Reverend Edward Ellis, Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham.

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