The flags of 14 nations made a fluttering rainbow above the portals of the House of Europe in Strasbourg. Inside, before a semicircle of 200 desks, Belgium's portly Paul-Henri Spaak, president of the Consultative Assembly, spoke heatedly. His pugnacious lower lip was thrust forward, his left hand plunged into a pocket, accenting his resemblance to Winston Churchill.
". . . For five years [we] have lived in the fear of the Russians and from the charity of the Americans," he said. "Before such a spectacle we are listless, as if history would wait, as if we had time—decades and decades—to transform our...