Uniting Men - Jean Monnet - Notes and References

Notes and References

1.Etienne Clementel, born in 1864. MP from his native town in Auvergne, he was instrumental in the French legislation  dealing with agricultural cooperative societies. Minister of Colonies in 1905 and 1906, he tried to bring about more collaboration with the native populations. Generous and open to new ideas, he declared in a Congress in 1900, "The aim is not to draft a programme of action to transform the present social organization, but to generalize, without any specific doctrine in mind, the feeling of universal sympathy and the idea that all men are united in the unique and divine essence of humanity. When this feeling and this idea have penetrated. everywhere, when they have become alive in the same way they already are in the minds of many thinkers, the social solutions preparing the Great Human Federation will arise by themselves, called by the invincible force of evolution." After the war, Clementel would get involved in the creation of the International Chamber of Commerce and would try to make this body into an instrument of international solidarity.

2. Ten thousand kilometers away, in Pondicherry, a small French enclave in South India, the great Indian leader and sage, Sri Aurobindo, in a conversation with his disciples, noted the proposal for an Anglo-French union. He warmly supported it, and even spoke of the possibility of India joining it. "And even if the Anglo-French Union does not become permanent, they can have a very powerful federation with Holland, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Czekoslovakia and they can request India to join it voluntarily as an equal partner." It

is to be recalled that all other Indian leaders wanted to see their colonial masters defeated in the war. At the beginning of the century Sri Aurobindo had been the first Indian to call for complete independance from the British. Yet he was the only personality in India at the time of the Second World War to openly support the Allies because, as he said, "Hitlerism is the greatest menace that the world has ever met." (Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, recorded by A.B. Purani, third Series, Pondicherry: 1966).

3. Robert Schuman (1886-1963) was born in Luxembourg to parents from Lorraine. The Lorraine province of France had been captured by Germany after the French defeat of 1870. This is why Schuman was educated in the German education system and would always speak French with a German accent. He became a lawyer. After the First World War, Alsace and Lorraine were retaken by France. Schuman became active in French politics, was elected a member of Parliament and served in this capacity till 1940. In. 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo but escaped in 1942 and joined the French Resistance. After the war, he was briefly Prime Minister in 1947-48 and then became Foreign Minister. In 1958 Schuman would be elected president of the European Assembly in Strasbourg.

 4. In his Memoirs, Adenauer remembered, In his personal letter to me Schuman wrote that the purpose of his proposal was not economic, but eminently political. In France there was a fear that once Germany had recovered, she would attack France. He could imagine that the corresponding fears might be present in Germany. Rearmament always showed first in an increased production of coal, iron, and steel. If an organization  such as he was proposing were to be set up, it would enable each country to detect the first signs of rearmament, and would have an extraordinarily calming effect in. France. Schuman's plan corresponded entirely with the ideas I had been advocating for a long time concerning the integration of the key industries of Europe. I informed Robert Schuman at once that I accepted his proposal whole-heartedly."

5. Jean Monnet in : Henri Rieben, Claire Camperio-Tixier, and Francoise Nicod, A I'Econte de Jean Monnet (Lausanne:  Jean Monnet for Europe Foundation, 2004) p. 82.

6. Jean Monnet, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday and Company 1978) p. 524

7. Quoted by Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in: Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet (Lausanne: Jean Monnet for Europe Foundation, 1996), p. 104. 

8. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 61-62. 
9. Ibid, pp.83-84.

10. Ibid, pp. 96-97. 11. The treaty between the vanquished and the victors at the end of World War I which imposed heavy territorial, political and economical sanctions on Germany.

12. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in:  Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op. cit., pp. 136-37.

13. Quoted by Francois Duchene in Jean Monnet, The first Statesman of Interdependence (New York: W. W. Norton &. Company, 1994), pp. 96-97. 
14. The General Henri Giraud fought in Morocco during World War I. In 1940 at the beginning of World War II, he was made a prisoner. He escaped in 1942 and reached Algeria. There he was made "civil and military commander in chief" by people sympathizing with the regime of Vichy with the support of the Americans.

15. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in : Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op. cit., pp. 119-21.
16. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 291-92. ; 

17. Alcide de Gasperi: 1881-1954. Alcide de Gasperi played an important role in the Italian political life until Mussolini, came to power. Then he spent sixteen months in jail for anti-fascist activities. After World War II, he found himself in the forefront of political life as the leader of the Christian Democracy. From

1945 to 1953 he led eight successive governments. A great believer in Europe, he was instrumental in Italy joining the ECSC. Later Gasperi actively supported the project of the European Defence Community and wanted this project to be linked with the creation of a European political authority. He was the first chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the ECSC. 

18. Quoted by Eric Roussel in jean  Monnet (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p. 562

19. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in :  Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op. cit.,p. 151.

20. Kon-Tiki: in 1947 the Kon-Tiki expedition led by the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl set out to prove that ancestors of Polynesians could have come by sea from South America, pushed from east to west by winds and currents, and settled on these islands in Pre-Columbian times. A primitive balsa wood raft was built by Heyerdahl as a copy of a prehistoric South American vessel. Constructed of nine logs collected from Ecuador, this raft with six men on board left Peru the 28th of April 1947, sailed across the Pacific ocean at a very great speed and landed in Polynesia after 101 days. All the men were in good condition and had found that they could live off the fruits of the ocean, as the raft attracted lots of marine life. Before the expedition, numerous experts had predicted that this crossing was absolutely impossible. A film and a book made this adventure extremely famous. 

21. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 376.

22.Ibid., p. 103. 

23. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in:  Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op. cit., pp. 146-47.

24. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 167.

25. Ibid., p. 198.

26. Ibid., pp. 230-31

27. A I'Ecoute de jean Monnet, op. cit., p. 105. 

28. On the 3rd of January 1966, the French magazine

L'Express published Monnet's photo on its cover page under the title "Mr Europe". In October 1967, Monnet attended a debate in the Bundestag where a resolution passed by his Action Committee was discussed. After the vote, Monnet, joined in the gallery by the Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger, was given a standing ovation

29. Quoted by Eric Roussel in Jean Monnet, op. cit., pp 863-64. 

30. Ibid., p. 871

31. Jean Monnet, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 323-24.

32. Stress is ours.

33. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in : Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op cit., p. 144. 

34. Jacques Van Helmont, "Jean Monnet comme il etait", in:  Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine, Jean Monnet, op. cit., p. 52.

35. The 9th of May 1950 had been the day when the "Schuman plan" had been made public in Paris. To this day the 9th of May is called Europe Day. 

36. Francois Fontaine, "Plus loin avec Jean Monnet", in: Jacques Van Helmont and Francois Fontaine,/aw Monnet, op. cit., p. 95.

37. Sadhana: from the Sanskrit root sadh: to bring to fruition, to lead to the goal. Spiritual self-training aimed at becoming a perfect instrument of the divine force.

38. A I'Ecoute de jean Monnet, op. cit., pp. 239-40.

39. Ibid., p. 43. 

40. Ibid., pp. 48-49.

41. Underlined in the original. 

42. A I'Ecoute de jean Monnet, op. cit., p. 56.

43. Tapasya: from the Sanskrit root: tap, to heat. In. the yogic tradition tapasya describes the gathering of all faculties on a unique point — a concentration so intense and powerful that it can produce fire.

Map of Europe at the time of the Cold War. Germany is divided between the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) and DRG (the Democratic Republic of Germany)