Rearming, with Provisos

All over West Germany, people tuned in. Red-handed kitchenmaids hurried through with the morning dishes so as to catch the 9:30 openings of the sessions--the radio carried every word spoken from West Germany's Bundestag. Over the two days it was probably the most closely followed debate in German history. The victors, who seven years ago vowed to keep Germany disarmed, were now urging her to take up arms. The debate quickly got down to what price the Germans could extract for obliging.

Pleas & Warnings. As he mounted the rostrum and waited for the jingle of the little long-handled silver bell which starts debate, 76-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer looked tired. For months he and the allies had been negotiating a "contract," a preliminary peace treaty, to replace the occupation. He was near the end of his bargaining, he said, and at the stage where he needed a parliamentary majority behind him.

For 2 1/2 hours Adenauer spoke reasonable words, as a European rather than as a German. The proposed European army, he said, would not only help hold off Russia but, in 10 or 20 years, would make impossible any recurrence of wars between France and Germany. As for Germany, she would have equality within the European defense community, "which would, in turn, become a part of the developing Atlantic community . . . I have no possible doubt that we shall one day become a member of NATO quite spontaneously." As to the vexed question of who should control the Saar (TIME, Feb. 11), he spoke in general terms about "negotiating the problem in due time in a way that will do justice" to both French and German interests. Then he laid down a warning: "The great danger is that some day public opinion in the U.S. might say that we Europeans don't want to realize the danger we are in, and that we keep on squabbling among ourselves over side issues. Then they might withdraw their help."

Inside & Out. When he sat down, the Socialists went after him hot & heavy, anxious to fix his party with the onus of a peace treaty they could fight at the polls 17 months from now. Adenauer's own Centrist coalition fought him too. In the end, they tacked on to his rearmament resolution four sticky conditions:

P: The freeing of all war criminals convicted by allied courts, except those whose crimes were "in the conventional sense of the word."

P: A guarantee of full future membership in NATO.

P: A promise from the French that they would not "prejudice" the Saar situation.

P: An end of allied controls on German cartels, allied restrictions on war production, and allied bans against atomic experimenting.

With these restrictions tied on, which would raise plenty of problems for the allies to settle at their forthcoming Lisbon session, Adenauer's rearmament resolution went through by a vote of 204 to 156.

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