JEAN MONNET: THE PATH TO EUROPEAN UNITY This page intentionally left blank Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity Edited by Douglas Brinkley and Clifford Hackett Introduction by George W. Ball St. Martin's Press New York © Douglas Brinkley and Clifford Hackett 1991 All rights resetved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, StMartin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Firsr published in the United States of America in I 991 ISBN 978-0-312-04773-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-312-08608-4 ISBN 978-1-137-12050-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-12050-2 Library of Congress-in-Publication Data Jean Monnet : the path to European unity I edited by Douglas Brinkley And Clifford Hackett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Monnet, Jean, 1888- . 2. Statesmen-Europe--Biography. 3. European federation. I. Brinkley, Douglas. II. Hac:ken, Clifford P. 0413.M56J43 1991 940.5'092-dc:20 [B] 90-39706 CIP Contents Preface v1 Douglas Brinkley and Clifford Hackett Acknowledgements 1x The Contributors x Introduction xn George W. Ball 1 Forward withJean Monnet 1 Franr;ois Fontaine (translated by Margot Lyon) 2 An Unsung Hero of World War II 67 Robert R. Nathan 3 Jean Monnet, the United States and the French 86 Economic Plan Irwin Wall 4 Gray Eminence 114 Richard Mayne 5 Jean Monnet and the European Coal and Steel 129 Community: A Preliminary Appraisal John Gillingham 6 What Type of Europe? 163 Robert Marjolin 7 Jean Monnet's Methods 184 Franr;ois Duchene 8 Jean MonnetAs He Was 210 jacques Van He/mont (translated by Margot Lyon) Bibliography ofJ ean Monnet and His Times 219 Index 223 v Preface When the Jean Monnet Council began its work in early 1988, it was the Monnet centennial. There was naturally much talk about how the new American organization should mark Monnet's anniversary in the year in which France would place his ashes in the Pantheon, the greatest honor which the grandest nation-state has devised to honor one of its citzens. Out of such concerns came this book. This volume resulted from the intersection of several generations of admirers of Jean Monnet. The April 1988 Council session, with a wide range of people interested in Monnet, decided that a book of essays representing both European and American writers was the most appropriate tribute from the country this remarkable Frenchman liked so much and where he had so many friends. The editors, who know Monnet only from his historical reputation, represent two generations of his admirers: those who remember the early post-war years and Monnet's work, and those too young for such recollections but who now recognize his enormous accomplishments. Another genera tion, those who worked directly with Monnet and knew those accomplishments and his characteristics firsthand, are also well represented in this unusual collection. Selecting the essays was not an easy task. So much had been written about Monnet that even reprinting the best would take far more than one large volume. Furthermore, much of that writing was in other languages so that transla tions, with all of their hazards, might be required. Finally, there were still aspects of Monnet's life not fully explored for which new writing was needed. We decided, therefore, on a mixed volume of American and European authors, and of both new and published pieces, including some translations which we commissioned. A brief word about the authors is appropriate for while each is an expert on some (or several) aspects of Monnet and his work, not every one of them is well-known in this country. The introduction by George W. Ball, who is well known for his work in the State Department and as a commentator on VI Preface Vll foreign affairs, sets Monnet briefly and carefully between the worlds of Europe and America, moving easily between the two. Ball worked with Monnet from the early days of World War II, later advised him in the Commissairiat du Plan in Paris after the war, gradually developed a deep friendship with him over the decades and had an American Thanksgiv ing dinner with him in Houjarray, the Monnet home outside Paris, just months before Monnet died there in 1979 at the age of ninety-one. The European authors include Franc,;ois Duchene and Richard Mayne, two Englishmen who worked closely with Monnet from the 1950s when he was engaged in construct ing the foundations of the European Community whose institutions today remain his finest monument. Their essays are both remarkable etchings of Monnet, yet quite different from each other; Duchene's shrewdly analyzes the Monnet method, a topic he has studied for several years; Mayne writes a brief biography of the 'Gray Eminence', full of personal touches and clear insights. Three Frenchmen, each close to Monnet for many years, are represented by newly-translated accounts of Monnet's influence in both European events and in their own quite distinctive lives. The first is Franc,;ois Fontaine, who worked with Monnet for over thirty years, and who wrote the fine piece 'Forward With Jean Monnet' partly, he notes, to encourage other close friends to share their recollections and partly because Monnet himself was so sparing in his Memoirs in giving space to the personal side of his long life. Fontaine tries in his essay to point out some features of that life with rare insight and great admiration. A second French compatriot of Monnet represented here is Robert Marjolin from whose own memoirs, Le travail d'une vie, two sections are excerpted here: the first on Monnet and de Gaulle, the other on the European Community. Both show Marjolin's sharp insights and the second also unveils the limits of Marjolin's admiration of Monnet's work in constructing a supranational Europe. The final essay by a Frenchman, and the last in the book, is a moving tribute by Jacques Van Helmont, '] ean Monnet As He Was'. This small essay, possible only by one who knew Monnet intimately and observed him incessantly, is sparse. It Vlll Preface contains few adjectives, little praise, and is largely a recitation of some mundane aspects of Monnet the man: how he breathed, and worried about his health; how he travelled; how he worried decisions and events almost to death until he dominated them; how he lived with change, and why he found the United States and its citizens so compatible. The American authors begin with Robert Nathan's firsthand account of Monnet during World War II when they worked together to plan the great increases in American military production from their relatively modest perches in the expanding Washington power game in the early 1940s. Irwin Wall and john Gillingham, two American historians, tell fascinating stories of Monnet as head of France's first Plan from 1946-52 and as head of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, respectively. Together these accounts bridge the movement of Monnet from private citizen and banker, pressed into wartime service as experi enced expediter, to government planner and master builder of the new institutions of postwar Europe. The result, as with all writing, must speak for itself. We can only commend the authors for their contributions and their generosity in making them available to the Jean Monnet Council for this volume. D.B. and C.H. Acknowledgements The editors are grateful to the publishers George Weiden feld and Nicolson, London, for the use of the excerpts from their edition of Robert Marjolin's Memoirs; to Professor Henri Rieben, and the Fondation Jean Monnet Pour l'Europe and the Centre de recherches europeennes in Lausanne which he directs, for permission to translate and use the essays by Franc;ois Fontaine and Jacques Van Hel mont, which originally appeared in French in the Cahiers Rouge series of those remarkable institutions; and to The American Scholar where the essay by Richard Mayne first appeared in August 1984. They are also grateful to the support given in the prepara tion of the manuscript by Hofstra University's Secretarial Services and the Center for American-Netherlands Studies. Finally, they wish to acknowledge the support and under standing of the Jean Monnet Council (incorporated as the American Council for Jean Monnet Studies), the sponsor of this volume which is one of the Council's major efforts to make Monnet and his accomplishments better known in the United States. IX