Views from the Seine and Potomac
SCHAPIRO, J. SALWYN
Views from the Seine and Potomac Diversity of Worlds. By Raymond Aron & August Heckscher. Reynal, 178 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by J. Salwyn Schapiro Professor emeritus of history, CCNY; author,...
...Hence the problem to them was essentially military and not, as the French maintained, political...
...Last year a conference, sponsored by the World Peace Foundation, was held at Arden House to examine the tensions in Franco-American relations with the purpose of preserving the old friendship...
...The American delegates tried to reassure their French colleagues by stating that, since the fate of their country was bound to that of Europe, the United States would intervene even if this led to the bombardment of American cities...
...They warned that the elimination of France from North Africa would compromise the safety of Western Europe...
...According to Aron...
...Whatever differences exist are those of tone and emphasis, not those of vital national interests...
...As rapporteurs the conference chose Raymond Aron, influential commentator on Le Figaro of Paris and professor at the Sorbonne...
...This view regarding Germany was opposed by the Americans, who favored EDC as laying the groundwork for the reconciliation of France and Germany...
...As long as NATO is maintained in full strength, argued the French delegates, the West can "gamble without risk" by seconding Russia's efforts to establish coexistence...
...The French are even willing to share ancestors with their African fellow citizens...
...Local self-government has been granted to the colonies...
...Some of the French delegates asserted that American anti-colonialism was motivated by a desire to replace, in North Africa, the political presence of France with the economic presence of America...
...Only the "chill winds of international competition" will eventually break down the "obstruction and rigidities of the French social order...
...on the contrary, they have been allies in three great conflicts: the American Revolution and the two World Wars...
...Aron's part of the book deals chiefly with these problems...
...author, "Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism" From the very cradle of its national life America has had a friend in France...
...Unfortunately, rifts have recently appeared between these traditional friends...
...The result is this unique volume...
...A question, hotly debated, was: If America "no longer has atomic superiority over the Soviet Union, is it still in a position to protect Western Europe against Soviet aggression...
...Fear of German rearmament, combined with detestation of union with its historic enemy, caused France to defeat EDC...
...This view was not at all accepted by the American delegates, who were convinced that Russia was determined to establish a Communist world through conquest...
...and August Heckscher, formerly editorial writer on the New York Herald Tribune and now Director of the Twentieth Century Fund...
...In fairness to France it must be said that it has made every effort to get rid of the stigma of colonialism...
...For this he is taken to task by Aron, who points out that such industries as steel, automobiles and chemicals are highly concentrated in France and are as modern in their methods as any in the world...
...African children, studying history in the French schools, are taught to be proud of "our ancestors, the Gauls...
...In Algeria, the Mollet Cabinet has offered complete equality of Moslems with non-Moslems...
...His theme centers on the "subtle oppositions of value" arising from the contrast between America "with its emphasis on bigness and mass production" and France "with its emphasis on a supremely skilled handicraft...
...In a preface, Arnold Wolfers says that the conference "would have justified the efforts that went into it if it had done no more than to induce these two authors to present their illuminating picture of one of the world's most baffling sets of problems...
...Heckscher has little faith in the power of legislation to resolve the conflict between a "deeply rooted culture and the strains of the machine civilization...
...The delegates were French and American scholars and leaders of public opinion...
...Of the larger nations in Western Europe, France is the only one with which America has never been at war...
...In their book of unique reporting Aron and Heckscher have succeeded in presenting, clearly and effectively, the different views of the delegates at this conference...
...The conference could not have been better served than by these scholarly journalists...
...Their report is the book under review, part written by Aron and part by Heckscher...
...Both are committed up to the hilt to the maintenance of the Western order of life...
...On the subject of North Africa and of colonialism in general, the discussion became somewhat acid...
...The American tradition of hostility to colonialism in all forms ran counter to the French conviction that the colonies were vital to the maintenance of France as a great power...
...He finds what Herbert Luethy found in his provocative France Against Herself: a moribund economic system "vested and congealed," based on small family enterprise...
...The discussion pertaining to Soviet Russia centered around NATO...
...What was said at the conference is rewoven by each author into a coherent pattern, French in design by Aron, and American in design by Heckscher...
...EDC was opposed by France because it "implied the fusion of the armies, prelude to the fusion of the states...
...The French delegates remained skeptical...
...A divided Germany obviated the possibility of new dangers to France...
...it would create a power vacuum which Soviet Russia would hasten to fill...
...And rightly so...
...There have been no serious conflicts between France and America...
...Citizenship has been extended to colonial peoples...
...Although the range of the discussion was worldwide, special attention was given to those problems arising from the situations created by Soviet Russia, Germany and North Africa...
...Heckseher's part of the book deals chiefly with the differences in the economies of America and France...
...It is far more than a summary of the discussions...
...Morocco and Tunisia were given independence...
...The present reviewer heartily endorses this comment...
...When the problem of Germany came before the conference, not many French tears were shed over its partition...
...Moreover, the safeguarding of the French community of 2.5 million in North Africa was, according to Aron, "a responsibility France is absolutely resolved to meet...
...What began as a debate on Franco-American tensions soon developed into a discussion of the attitude of each nation to the problems posed by the conflict between East and West...
Vol. 40 • April 1957 • No. 15
