ECONOMICS: Schumcm Plan Deadlock

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Britain's King one day last week visited the Royal Academy's show of modern French art, accompanied by France's Ambassador, Rene Massigli. When the royal party reached a huge abstract painting by Fernand Leger called La Noce (The Wedding), King George stopped. For a moment the King gazed at the strange melee of human figures squeezed into cubist shapes, then turned to the Ambassador. "What is it?" he asked. "The Schuman Plan?"

His Majesty was right on top of the news. For the Schuman Plan, ten months after it was put forth, last week lay deep in an international muddle. The scheme for pooling Western Europe's coal and steel resources (TIME, May 22 et seq.-) has met increasing opposition from Western Europe's industrialists, especially the Germans. The industrialists object to the fact that an international "High Authority" is to get all the powers which in the past were wielded by industrial cartels.

French sponsors of the Schuman Plan and American cartel-busters told a six-nation conference in Paris that the big combinations of Ruhr coal & steel producers must be broken up before the Plan can be put into effect. The German industrialists, supported by the German Socialists and trade unions, argued that the old cartel arrangements were economical and efficient, that any change would give the

French an unfair advantage. At various times, both the French and the Germans were ready to quit the discussions; only U.S. pressure induced them to stay.

Last week German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's office hopefully declared that a compromise "formula" was "in sight." If the question of the High Authority, v. the cartels can be settled, the treaty draft will go to the Western European foreign ministers who must set up the "High Authority," and finally to the national parliaments, who will have to ratify it. The Schuman Plan remains, in spite of cubist complexities, Europe's best hope for economic unity and strength.