Brutal Rebuff

In Paris last week, Charles de Gaulle held one of the most extraordinary press conferences of his career. The general was by turns ironical, frigid and passionate.

He said that France would get out of the Marshall Plan rather than cooperate in a European union built around a dominant Germany. "The British and Americans want to reconstitute the Reich. That is not worth denying . . .

"I know that on the Anglo-Saxon side the idea is that this Reich will become an element which can be opposed to Soviet Russia. Maybe; but maybe not . . .

"Believe me, I have weighed my words, and I tell you that this decision about the Ruhr is one of the gravest decisions of the 20th Century ... We lived for centuries without a Marshall Plan ... I think it can be immensely useful to Europe and France, but on one condition: that it does not lead us ... to sacrifice all the future of the country and of Europe."

Forty Million Frenchmen. These were arrogant, offensive and injurious words. The point, however, was that Charles de Gaulle spoke for virtually 40 million Frenchmen. Not since the war had there been such a unanimous upsurge of French resentment--from extreme left to extreme right--against the U.S. and Britain.

The cause of the turmoil was Law 75, promulgated in Frankfurt last fortnight by the Anglo-U.S. military commanders in Bizonia, Generals Sir Brian Robertson and Lucius D. Clay. Law 75 transfers ownership of the Ruhr coal, iron and steel industries to temporary German trustees, and provides that when a freely elected democratic German government is able to do so, it shall decide the question of private or public ownership. The reason given for Law 75 was that the promise of eventual German ownership would raise morale among German workers and managers, and therefore raise production.

A French Foreign Office spokesman blasted Law 75 as a fait accompli and "a brutal rebuff." Foreign Minister Schuman, who has much more understanding of the Anglo-U.S. position than most Frenchmen have, called in the British and U.S. ambassadors, handed them a protest. In Washington, French Ambassador Henri Bonnet protested to Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett. The French got a promise that the Clay-Robertson action would be immediately reviewed by Washington and London.

A Tempting Opportunity. John Foster Dulles, acting head of the U.S. delegation to the U.N., made a cogent point last week: "The problem of Germany cannot be satisfactorily solved except within the framework of some Western European unity. [The Germans] could safely be given a great peaceful opportunity as a small minority--say 20%--of Western Europe. But as one of several separate independent nations in Europe, the Germans, strategically located in the middle of Europe, have a tempting opportunity to maneuver their way back to a dominant position."

Understandably, the U.S. wanted to raise German steel production in order to decrease European demands for U.S. steel. This policy, however, had to be fitted into the broad U.S. responsibility for Western leadership. France and the Benelux countries would lose confidence in U.S. leadership, indispensable to Western Union, if decisions of vital importance to them were taken without consulting them and without considering their deep-rooted fears of a German resurgence.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.