Cracks in the Road

Unifying and strengthening Western Europe is something like building a road over uncertain footing. The roadbuilders' efforts may be impressive, but at any moment the smoothest-looking stretch may crack.

So it was last week. The first crack appeared in the Saar region. After 23 months of majestic planning and hard work to unite the old enemies, France and Germany, into an economic and military union, the French and Germans were at each other's throats over which nation should control the Saar's iron & coal.

In the Bundestag, the powerful Socialists demanded that the Saar issue be settled before West Germany's "peace contract" with its former enemies. Forced to give ground, and himself angry at France's conduct in the Saar (TIME, Feb. 11), 76-year-old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer abruptly canceled further talks with the French; they had been unable, he said, to grasp "the European idea" and had double-crossed him. His action, in turn, jeopardized the political future of France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, who has trouble enough trying to persuade his countrymen" to bargain with Germans.

Argument for the Voters. Then a second crack opened. This one also involved the stretch of road entrusted to Konrad Adenauer. An ominously large group of re-Germanized Germans--Socialists, members of Adenauer's own coalition, rightists--have been urging him to reply favorably to Stalin's proposal for a reunited, rearmed but "neutralized" Germany. Adenauer stonily insisted that peace with the West and a place in Western rearmament should come first. There were ugly whispers in West Germany that Adenauer's stand was selfish, that if there were free, Germany-wide elections, his mainly Catholic and right-wing coalition would lose power in the deluge of Socialist votes from Protestant East Germany. Last week, Adenauer firmly derided this accusation. "I would be a bad Christian," he said, "if I would prefer to leave the

Germans in the Soviet zone to slavery because the majority are Protestant."

Then Adenauer abandoned his old stand, and announced that he too thought that the four big powers should confer on Germany. He attached three stipulations apt to prove sweet to Germans and bitter to Stalin: 1) genuinely free elections in the Soviet zone; 2) no "neutralizing" of the new Germany; 3) revision of the Oder-Neisse (Polish) frontiers. But he would go right ahead with the contract for West German integration with the West.

Then he unrolled a new argument, calculated to win him desperately needed support at home but bound to stir up abroad all the old misgivings about dealing with Germans: the allied contract with West Germany, he said, might just as well be put into effect, for if Germany is reunified, the new Germany will not be bound by the contract. "The general agreement," he said, "provides for reconsideration of all treaties in case of reunification of Germany."

Loophole for the Future. The West--especially France--was stunned. Could the Germans possibly be trusted? A second reading of the text quieted the Quai d'Orsay a little: they were convinced that correct old Konrad Adenauer was not suddenly running out on the West, but merely calling attention to a fact. Nonetheless it was the kind of loophole that might prove useful to a later German regime, not so European-minded as Adenauer's. The cracks in the road were still there.

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