Strength for the West

The bug-eyed cupids that support the baroque ceiling of the Quai d'Orsay's famed Clock Room have seen some sights in their time. In 1928, they looked down as diplomats, in high hope of a better world, signed the Kellogg peace pact, forever outlawing war. In 1938, they saw Hitler's envoys make their cynical pledge of peace with France. Last week, the cupids watched over another scene of hope; the Foreign Ministers of France, Italy, West Germany and Benelux were signing the Treaty Establishing the European Defense Community, the military equivalent of the Schuman coal-and-steel pool. When (and if) ratified, it will weld 400,000 armed Germans into a supranational European Army, responsible to NATO's new Commander Matt Ridgway. Ancient Dream. At 5:12 p.m., the six Foreign Ministers, flanked by the U.S.'s Dean Acheson and Britain's Anthony Eden, made their way through a battery of klieg lights to an E-shaped conference table. France's Robert Schuman tapped for silence. "Our aim," he said, "is common security and the safeguard of peace." Quai d'Orsay functionaries, inscrutable as croupiers, pushed stacks of documents like so many chips across the green baize tables. Diplomats went for their pens.

First to sign (because Germany--Al-lemagne--was first alphabetically) was leathery old Konrad Adenauer. He scratched his name on 17 different documents. Next came Belgium's Paul van Zeeland and France's Schuman, who obliged sound photographers with a running commentary: "We are now about to sign the mutual guarantee between EDC and the United Kingdom . . .We are now signing the NATO guarantee." Italy, Luxembourg and Holland followed. "Put some light on De Gasperi," shouted a cameraman, and there was light. After half-an-hour's scribbling, the ink was dry; so were the ministers. Arm in arm they marched out of the chamber to sample the Quai d'Orsay's champagne. On the E-shaped table, done up in red tape and sealing wax, they left the hopeful blueprints for a new Europe.

"We have seen," said Dean Acheson, "the beginning of the realization of an ancient dream--the unity of the free peoples of Western Europe." The dream had been caught and mounted in EDC's 131 articles and 15 annexes which established, on paper, a six-nation European Defense Force (EDF). The U.S. and Britain support EDC--but from a distance; they are backers but not members. EDF's 2,000,000 ground-force soldiers would in time wear the same uniforms, use the same weapons, serve the same commander in chief, SHAPE'S Marshal of France Alphonse Juin. Proposed strength of EDF: 43 combat groupements (i.e., small streamlined divisions), 6,000 planes, a sizable navy for coastal defense.

To recruit, train and oversee EDF, there would be a Council of Ministers, a nine-man Commissariat, a Court of Justice and an Assembly. The Syman assembly embodied the highest hopes of Pan-European dreams: it would evolve, said the treaty, into a responsible European congress with jurisdiction over the Schuman Plan, EDC and, if all went well, a United States of Europe.

EDC members would regard an attack on one as an attack on all. In addition, eight other nations in NATO, including the U.S. and Britain, would treat a threat to EDC as a threat to their own security. Since West Germany belongs to EDC but not to NATO, this meant an advance of the West's line of defense 200 miles farther east--from the Rhine frontier to the Elbe border of West Germany.

EDC depends to the last poilu's gaiter on the reconciliation of its two chief partners: France and Germany. It is at French insistence that the West imposes nettlesome restrictions on German sovereignty. Theoretically because West Germany is a "strategically exposed area," chiefly because of French fears, the Germans are forbidden to manufacture atomic, biological and chemical weapons. They would be allowed to recruit an 85,000-man air force, but not to make airplanes. They may build guided missiles--but only for short-range use: the British, remembering what Hitler's V-2s did to London, vetoed long-range rockets.

The Germans also got, at French insistence, a stern warning from the U.S. and Britain. Whitehall and Washington promised 1) to keep their troops in Germany until EDC is sturdily on its feet, 2) to treat a threat "from whatever quarter" to the "integrity or unity" of EDC as a threat to their own security. German bad faith would constitute such a threat.

Era's End. The architects of the new Europe had completed their paper plans. Now the negotiations would pass into the rougher hands of Parliaments, including the U.S. Senate. Before the first German soldier can don his European uniform, both the German peace contract and EDC's multilateral guarantees must be ratified. Until then, EDC is plan without substance: East German soldiers are already putting on their army suits; no West German will until 1954.

Most difficult to obtain would be the consent of France's National Assembly, which fears, with some reason, that a rearmed West Germany cannot be kept indefinitely in contractual confinement. Yet the writing on the wall was plain: if the French failed to ratify the European Army, the U.S. would inevitably rely more & more on Germany, less & less on France, to redress the imbalance of power between East & West. The postwar era of continuous U.S. concessions to French fears, delays and apathy was drawing to a close. The big new fact of Spring 1952 was the resurgence of Germany.

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