T HE formal entry of the United Kingdom into an enlarged European Economic Community in January 1973 will be a date of symbolic importance in British history. It will no doubt also open up discussion of a large number of practical questions, which have been held up during the last decade while Britain's eventual destination has remained in question. The violence and exaggerations of the parliamentary debate in 1972 have, moreover, made it seem as though the fact of entry will transform both Britain's political system and its position in the world-for good or evil according to the point of view. Yet the act of adherence to the Community can also! be seen as being very largely a recognition in diplomatic and legal terms of a situation which has long been evolving and has indeed been moving ahead of the diplomats and lawyers, who will now be doing no more than catch up with the facts of life. From this point of view, the British citizen on experiencing the first impact of entry into continental Europe may find, as Keats did on his first visit to Scotland, 'That the ground was as hard, that a yard was as long, that a song was as merry, that a cherry was as red, that lead was as weighty, that fourscore was as eighty, that a door was as wooden as in England.' 1 And, like Keats, he may ' stand in his shoes and wonder' whether he had really come to such a strange place after all. For most people life will presumably not seem very different in January 1973 from what it was in December 1972. One must not overstress this aspect of the great European decision, which will certainly mark the beginning of a new process, the results of which will only gradually become apparent. But in the matter of external relations, more than in most other fields, it is surely the case that the decision to take part in the attempt at integration within Western Europe has been the consequence rather than the cause of Britain's changed world position. The change has been dramatic and has occurred in identifiable stages since 1945. It has been determined in the main by circumstances outside British control, which no doubt