On Rock or Sand?

As the Foreign Ministers of Western Europe gathered in Rome last week, it seemed as if they had come to bury the European Army, not to raise it. France's proposed amendments to the European Defense Community treaty threatened to make it so acceptable to French opponents of the army that it would be completely unacceptable to West Germany, Italy and the three Benelux nations.

In back rooms and over green baize tables in a 16th-century Roman villa, EDC's two most fervent champions teamed up to save the dream of a six-nation internationalized army. Switching dexterously from Italian to French to old-fashioned but serviceable German, Italy's Premier Alcide de Gasperi worked on French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault and other ministers behind the scenes.

Mono Lisa's Smile. From his briefcase dour West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer produced a pile of secret German intelligence documents describing the military build-up of Russia and its satellites; he listed fact & figure evidence of "the tragic disparity" between Eastern power and Western ability to resist it. "I have been watching these things for many years," warned Adenauer, "and I must say there has never been a threat so great from the East. There is no time to lose."

Under De Gasperi's private urgings and Adenauer's public alarms, Georges Bidault, the diplomat with the Mona Lisa smile, announced that France had no intention of reneging on the EDC idea, which it had proposed in the first place. It considered its "protocols" to be not amendments to the treaty, said Bidault, but only "interpretive" addenda which need not be ratified, need not even cause any delay in prompt ratification of the treaty in the six West European Parliaments. What is more, said he, France is perfectly willing to consider changes in the "protocols" themselves.

The Rome conference broke up in a sunburst of optimism. "I am confident," beamed De Gasperi, "that all six powers will ratify the treaty by this summer."

A Jolt for the Premier. But even before Bidault left for home, the clouds drifted back across the sun. Of course, he told newsmen, France still wants revisions in the treaty, one way or other, and it will not even attempt to push the treaty through the National Assembly until the French revisions have been "redrafted and accepted" by the other five powers. "A great step forward could be taken." said Bidault with perhaps more candor than he intended, "if France were in a position to make up her mind as to what she really wants to do." The fact is, added neutralist Le Monde, that "neither in parliament nor in the country is there at present any majority for any solution of the problem of European defense."

Back in Paris. General Charles de Gaulle huffed & puffed. "With or without the protocols," boomed the general, "the EDC treaty is, in its form and in its spirit, entirely unacceptable." Premier Rene Mayer had been able to put together his precarious coalition only with De Gaulle's help, the only one of France's last 16 governments to win De Gaulle's grudging support.

Now De Gaulle's continuing intransigence seemed to jolt Rene Mayer out of the notion that he could appease everybody. The Premier replied to De Gaulle at week's end with the most spirited defense he has ever made of the European Army ideal. EDC offers France, he warned, the only feasible way of getting both the security of West German military strength and safeguards against a revival of aggressive German militarism. "Who," he asked, "will take the responsibility of leaving France alone in the face of mounting dangers?"

"If the treaties are not ratified," said Premier Mayer, "all these systems of guarantees will collapse. It would be necessary, then, to rebuild on sand--in a difficult atmosphere, with allies whom we would have disillusioned and German partners who, perhaps, would not be the same."

This was plain speaking at last: it is the French who must decide whether to build on rock or on sand.

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