Accordingly, the French representative was careful, from the beginning,
to avoid all ambiguity when, taking the initiative at the first European
reunion, he expressed the opinion that it should include only the
representatives of the States which are Members of the League of Nations,
and should meet at Geneva on the occasion of the Tenth Assembly - that is to
say, in the atmosphere and within the framework of the League of Nations.
The proposed European organisation could not be opposed to any
ethnographical combination outside the League, either in Europe itself or in
other continents, any more than it could be to the League itself.
The work of European coordination meets requirements so immediate and so
vital that it seeks to be an end in itself, by doing positive work which can
in no way be directed or allowed to be directed against anyone. On the
contrary, this work will be carried on in complete and friendly trust, and
even often in collaboration, with all other States or groups of States which
are so sincerely interested in the organisation of universal peace as to
recognise the advantage of a greater homogeneity in Europe, and which, in
addition, understand sufficiently clearly the modern laws of international
economy to seek, in the better organisation of a Europe which has been
simplified and thereby freed from the constant menace of conflicts, the
conditions of security indispensable to the development of their own
economic intercourse.
The policy of European union, towards which must tend the present search
for the first link of solidarity between the governments of Europe, implies,
in effect, a conception absolutely contrary to that which formerly led to
the creation in Europe of customs unions, tending to abolish internal
customs barriers in order to erect on the boundary of the whole community a
stiffer barrier - that is to say, in order to create, in practice, a weapon
against the States situated outside these unions.
