The New Republic of Germany

For the second time in 33 years, the U.S., Great Britain and France this week made peace with their defeated enemy, Germany. Flags flew in the German capital and Chancellor Adenauer proclaimed a holiday for the nation's schoolchildren as the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, France, the U.S. and West Germany put their pens (each used his own) to the "Convention of Relations between the Three Powers and the Federal Republic of Germany."

The celebration, though anything but spontaneous, stood in sharp contrast to the bitterness of Adenauer's predecessors in the Weimar Republic on that day in June 1919 when the victors at Versailles stripped Germany of its wealth to pay for "all damage done . . . by aggression by land, by sea and from the air." That time there were reparations and forced acknowledgment of war guilt; this time the vanquished had a chance to bargain.

Grandstanders. Decked with flowers, but plain and drab beside the spacious and glittering Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles, Bonn's Bundesratsaal, chamber of the upper house of West Germany's Parliament, had room for only 500 witnesses to the signing. Many a lesser dignitary, invited to watch, was forced to sit in a makeshift grandstand on an adjoining roof and peer at the proceedings through windows. Gravely formal in dark suits, the signers went through their paces almost woodenly. Of all of them, Adenauer was the only one who wore a smile, and that for only one flickering second.

Even before the agreement was signed, Russia sent a note calling it "a flagrant violation" of the Potsdam Agreement, which determined Four-Power rule in occupied Germany. Since Potsdam also guaranteed the Allies their right to stay in Berlin, the Russian threat was clear. The new Republic could count on many more such menacing noises in the future.

Nobody could be wholly optimistic over a compact which involved so many uncertainties. By the time the signatures were affixed this week to the German pact and its companion-piece, the European defense pact, each signatory had done his best to hedge the future with guarantees, but each alike was whistling in a global darkness. In the 33 years since 1919, the Western world had become sadder and wiser. West Germany itself was free again, but yet not completely free. Beaten as it had never been beaten before after the failure of the greatest power grab in its history, it had been liberated only on condition that it join its old enemies in their fight against a new one.

Last Standers. Hardly more optimistic than Germany were the other partners to the convention. France's government amended and worried the agreement right up to the last moment, like a nervous bride searching the marriage contract on her wedding night, for guarantees that her burly mate-to-be would not walk away with her dowry or take to beating her. In a deliberate gamble, the French nation was helping to restore to an ancient enemy the military might it had long held in mortal fear. At the last moment, France's Minister refused to sign until the Americans somehow guaranteed that a rearmed Germany could not drop out of the European Army. There was breathless scurrying about; finally it was agreed that President Truman, in a message to the U.S. Congress, would insist on the German Republic's continued participation.

Britain, in signing, was aiding its fiercest business competitor in the European market to new prestige. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that a free and revitalized Western Germany would soon become the strongest power in Europe outside Russia. The doubts, and there were many, lay in what effect that power might have on the world.

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