Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Western Europe, Volume IV

840.50 Recovery/10–1849: Telegram

The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Douglas) to the Secretary of State

secret

London, October 18, 1949—5 p. m.

4174. Deptel 3720 was received afternoon October 15. Spaak had already seen Cripps and was returning to Brussels without seeing Bevin. I conveyed the Secretary’s message to Bevin this morning and urged consideration of proposal, pointing out that there was a feeling in the US particularly in Congressional circles that progress toward economic integration Western Europe was slow and that continuation of the ECA program for a third year might be in doubt unless there was evidence of progress before next appropriation considered by Congress. It was felt that Spaak’s appointment would reinforce OEEC and contribute substantially toward impressing opinion in the United States that the work on economic integration was advancing.

Bevin said that he had endeavored to find out what Spaak’s authority and responsibility would be in OEEC but without success. He said that Spaak himself had been unable to give a satisfactory answer to this question to Cripps on October 14. Bevin said that he had given up the chairmanship of the OEEC Council of Ministers in favor of Belgium, that Spaak was President of the Council of Europe, and wanted to know whether the Belgians were to be president of everything. He felt this was a maneuver by Van Zeeland to get Spaak out of Belgium, which was particularly bad on the eve of the Belgian plebiscite concerning the return of the King.¹ This situation gave him serious trouble with his colleagues in the British Government. He said that the Labor Government could not under American pressure accept the appointment of Spaak or any other continental to a position of control in the OEEC. He was fearful that an attempt would be made to clothe the OEEC with political powers, that he had struggled against this, having been very definite in his instructions to Hall-Patch² that the function of OEEC was economic and factual and should not drift into the political sphere.

My feeling is that Bevin, Cripps and others feel so strongly on this subject that there is little likelihood that they will agree to Spaak’s appointment to any position of real authority in OEEC.

Sent Department 4174, repeated Paris 790, for Harriman and Bruce, Brussels 176 for information.

Douglas

1. King Leopold III.
2. Sir Edmund L. Hall-Patch, Permanent United Kingdom Representative on the OEEC with rank of Ambassador and Chairman of the OEEC Executive Committee.