Attempt at Compromise

Though it is no more than a tiny wrinkle on the face of Europe, the region called the Saar is one of the last big excuses for France's refusal to approve the European Army. To get that excuse out of the path of EDC, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer stopped off at Paris last week for a private conference with French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault. He was ready to shelve Germany's claims to the Saar and negotiate the terms of its "Europeanization," in return for Bidault's promise to set a firm date for a French showdown on the European Army.

A Test of Sincerity. For both Germans and Frenchmen, the Saar was a serious test of sincerity. In the course of three great wars between them, the Saar has changed hands four times. Its 1,000,000 sturdy coal miners, steelworkers and farmers speak and live as Germans, but since 1947, when the Allies linked the Saar's economy to that of France, the Saarlanders by their ballots have shown that they approve the 1947 arrangement.

But German recovery caused Saarlanders to look wistfully across the Rhine. West Germans revived the old slogan, Deutsch ist die Saar (The Saar is German), and began talking of another Anschluss. Paris was horrified; the French government vowed that it would never ratify EDC and German rearmament until Bonn promised never to take back the Saar into a German Reich. France's main reason: with the Saar, which now produces 28% of France's coal and 25% of its steel, French heavy industry can compete with West Germany's Ruhr; without it, French production would be hopelessly outmatched.

Though it threw him flat against the current of West German opinion, Konrad Adenauer knew that the dream of EDC was doomed unless Germany made concessions to France over the Saar. He agreed to accept "as a basis for discussion" a plan drafted by a Netherlands Socialist lawyer named Marinus van der Goes van Naters. Its essentials:

P: TheSaar will be an autonomous European territory.

P: Its economy will remain linked to France, but Germany will get gradually increasing "most favored nation" treatment until the Schuman coal-steel pool develops a common European market.

P: Saar "foreign policy" will be directed by an impartial high commissioner--neither French nor German nor Saarlander--responsible to the Council of Europe.

A Severe Disappointment. Since Bidault had also accepted the plan "en principe," Adenauer expected to get matters moving in the direction of a brass-tacks settlement. This would give Bidault and Premier Laniel a garland of good news with which to deck their demand for a parliamentary vote on EDC. But Bidault last week produced a new memorandum and said Germany would have to accept it. Its major new provision: no trade preferment for West Germany in the Saar until the common market for Europe is well under way. This meant granting Paris an indefinite veto over German trading rights in the Saar.

Obviously affronted, Adenauer held his temper, asked for time to consider the document. An hour later, Adenauer trudged back to the conference room and told Bidault: "All right." Then he put the question: What about a date for France's EDC debate? Bidault's reply was a severe disappointment. He was sorry, but the government had not been able to schedule the debate, and it did not know when it would. Disconsolately, Adenauer put his name with Bidault's on a pious communique ("A complex subject").

Said one of the Germans who stayed behind: "The French know, and we know, they can have the Saar. But they won't get our final agreement until we get EDC in return. It was the French who first said, no Saar, no German divisions. This works the other way around, too."

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