The Smoke That Satisfies

Panting and wheezing, the concierge climbed to the sixth floor of the grey building at 53 Quai d'Orsay, overlooking the same stretch of the summery Seine as the nearby French Foreign Office. A 64-year-old World War I veteran, Louis-Christophe Gaillard was a vacation substitute for the regular concierge at the Hotel du Tabac (so called because it used to house the French state tobacco monopoly). He shuffled into the main conference room, where a council meeting of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation had just ended. Gaillard moved around the green-clothed table, carefully collecting cigarette butts from the overbrimming ashtrays.

"Remarkable symbolism, that," observed Alexandre Verdelis, Greek delegate to OEEC, who watched Gaillard. "He collects fragments of English 'Players,' French 'Gauloises,' American 'Chesterfields,' sweet Turkish and powdery Belgian cigarettes. He puts them all together and rolls a smoke that is undoubtedly harmonious."

The men who day after day sat smoking and talking around the green table were trying hard to blend their differences. Despite serious remaining obstacles, they had achieved more harmony than anyone had had reason to hope. They were talking resources and money and credits and export balances. What that talk added up to was the slowly growing life of Western Union.

What the Wise Men Said. Last month, EGA Administrator Paul G. Hoffman declared that OEEC must take on the job of whacking up U.S. aid among the various Marshall Plan countries. So a four-man committee (Britain, France, The Netherlands, Italy) locked itself in a solitary villa near Paris, to make suggestions about how the $4,875,000,000 for ECA's first year should be divided.

Last week, the "four wise men" (as they were dubbed) submitted their suggestions to OEEC's full council. The biggest slice was to go to Britain (more than one and a quarter billion dollars); next was France (about $1 billion) ; Italy (about $600 million). Most of the beneficiaries felt that the portions had been fairly worked out. Most troublesome dissenters were the Greeks (down for a reported $150 million) and the U.S. representatives of Western Germany (down for $350 million).

Ignoring the moral he had drawn from Gaillard's harmonious smoke, Greek Delegate Verdelis cried: "We have been most unfairly treated!"

Some gloomy reports from Paris last week said that European cooperation had been foiled and that the OEEC would have to ask Washington to slice the ECA pie. That, said one high OEEC official (an earnest Frenchman), was out of the question. "To admit to the Americans that we are incapable of dividing among ourselves the aid which they are giving to Europe would be an admission of European childishness--or decadence--which would make us all in this building very unhappy."

"It Is a Good Idea." So much for Europe's economic unity, without which Western Union must fail miserably. Last week also brought a step toward political unity which was equally important. At The Hague conference on Western Union (TIME, Aug. 2), France had proposed formation of a Western European parliament. The idea had been turned down as premature by Britain's Ernie Bevin and Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak. But last week France's doughty Foreign Minister Robert Schuman again went to bat for it.

Ernie Bevin still remained chilly. But Paul-Henri Spaak weightily changed his mind, admitted "It is a good idea."

In the conference room at the Hotel du Tabac, old Gaillard completed his progress around the green table. Pointing at the treasure he had collected from the ashtrays, he shrugged. "It makes cigarettes," he said matter-of-factly. "Mind you, as cigarettes go, these leave a lot to be desired. But then, any cigarette is preferable to a bunch of megots [butts]."

It looked as though Western Europe's nations were getting around to that view too. The perfect, harmonious Western Union brand was very slow in the making. But at least there was some action and smoke in the air.

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