The question is often asked whether the unification of Europe should take
its momentum from politics or from economics or from a change of spirit.
In practice, preparatory work must go forward at the same time on all
three planes - in politics through regional union and a realistic peace
policy, in economics by the removal of most-favoured nation treatment and
the inception of a European system of preference, in spirit through the
propagation of the European idea.
At the same time economic union is clearly dependent on political union,
and political change on a change of spirit.
It is impossible to make a customs union between states who are military
threats to each other. A threatened state must have recourse to a system of
autarky in order that it can produce within its own boundaries, in the case
of war or blockade, all articles which it needs for life and warfare. For
this reason it is not good sense to ask that Europe should first unify
itself economically and thereafter politically on the basis of economic
interdependence.
As Europe's collective security must precede an economic union, so a
European spirit must precede Europe's political unification. So long as
extreme nationalism prevails, every signed guarantee of freedom remains a
scrap of paper that can be torn up at any time by its signatory or his
successor in the alleged interest of his nation. Only a guarantee of freedom
which is borne on the broad current of public opinion can become the
foundation of European union ....
