"Just One More"

A supposedly routine meeting of the French cabinet one day last week produced an announcement that had all the contours of a big diplomatic monkey wrench. The French, in an abrupt departure from the agreed-upon tactics of the Big Three allies, asked for a four-power conference with Russia on the question of Germany.

The news fell with a startling clatter into the delicate diplomatic machinery of the allies. Russia naturally wants what France proposes: around a conference table it could postpone, perhaps even block, ratification of the West German peace contract and the European Army treaty. Without advance warning to Britain or the U.S., the French had seriously endangered the Allied position. Irritated State Department policymakers, set upon by reporters, squeezed out guarded and anonymous expressions of chagrin.

Hesitations. Second thoughts, haggles, reservations, foot-dragging and doubts were not confined to the French. In West Germany, Kurt Schumacher's Socialists and some of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's own government coalition used the French hesitations to reinforce their own. They want one more attempt to talk German unity with the Russians before the line dividing East Germany from West solidifies like the line that divided North and South Korea.

The British government is also more disposed to a four-power parley than it likes to admit. Said Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in the House of Commons last week: "That thought . . . is not excluded from my mind."

The fact is that millions in Western Europe and Britain seem anxious for "just one more" attempt to bargain. Each diplomatic success (such as the signing of the West German peace contract) produces an irrational reluctance to do more, seeing how well things are presumably going.

There were other second thoughts. Some came from diplomats who ardently believe in the European Army, and fear that Europe's "just one more" feeling will defeat ratification unless a Big Four parley can prove that the Russians are not ready to bargain. Some, like Britain's multiplying Bevanites and their Continental counterparts, still think there is a possibility of a deal with Russia that will relieve the allies of the oppressive stress & strains of rearmament. Others see it as a way to stall until the November elections show whether the next U.S. President will be a man who sticks in Europe or wants to withdraw.

Some Continental politicians believe that the Russians do genuinely fear German rearmament, and may be ready to talk business. In reply, the U.S. points to six years of Soviet obstructionism in U.N., 258 fruitless four-power sessions over an Austrian treaty, and a year's frustration at Panmunjom. To attempt to bargain before the West German and European Army treaties are ratified, the U.S, fears, means putting the treaties themselves on the table as bargaining items.

Back Down. Dismayed by the French proposal, Secretary of State Dean Acheson called in the French and British ambassadors, and talked consecutively to them for an hour and ten minutes. Soon the French backed down a bit, said that they propose a low-level conference of ambassadors or even lesser officials, not a full-dress foreign ministers' parley; they also want a tightly restricted agenda which Russia would have to agree to in advance. Next step: a meeting of the Big Three foreign ministers in London later this month. Originally Dean Acheson intended to visit England only to be made an honorary Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford. Now he will have to work to make the allies speak with but one voice again.

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