PARTISAN REVIEW
make good customers. And it would be unable to stop the Commu–
nist advance to the Atlantic. The Marshall Plan, for all its inade–
quacies and its hesitations, is an unmistakable expression of our
need of Europe.
.
The truth is that what Europe should fear in the United States
is not at
all
its "imperialism" (that fear may become appropriate
later, perhaps, but we cannot solve our children's problems). Europe
should rather fear the unwillingness of the United States to accept
world responsibilities commensurate with its present power.
So long as the serious possibility of Communist world conquest
remains, the United States must try to influence the foreign and
military policy of all accessible nations toward common defensive
measures. Since Communism is a force within each nation, as well
as external to it, this means necessarily also a concern with internal
policy so far as internal policy relates directly to the world struggle.
From this necessity there follows a limitation on sovereignty only if
the general world aim is not shared; if shared, the problem disappears.
But does respect for French sovereignty mean that France (if,
for example, the French Communist Party seized power) should be
free to become the de facto ally of the Kremlin, or to join the Fed–
eration of Soviet Republics? I do not know the answer of Washington.
My answer is, no. But I reject the question as unreal: a free France,
a sovereign France, would never so decide.
Assuming the collapse of the Communist world plan, the posi–
tive problem remains. The answer, it seems to me, depends on Eu–
rope rather than on the United States. No matter how many Marshall
Plans may be put into effect, the United States cannot reconstruct
Europe. It can only give Europe incidental means. Only Europe can
solve the problem of Europe.
If
Europe begins to live again, then
the present material ascendancy of the United States will give way
to a new world equilibrium in which cultural development will per–
haps function both to harmonize and counterweigh material power.
A final fact, repeated: for Europe to live again means, in the
concrete, for Europe to unite. And I want to link the problem of
European federation with what is, in fact, inseparable from it-the
German question.
You are doubtless aware, Malraux, that in the United States
a powerful current of opinion, very influential in the government,
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