Failure in Brussels

The radio voice of Pierre Mendes-France rang out across France. "I am conscious as I tackle this question that it touches the deepest chords in our national feeling. Not only does it divide Frenchmen among themselves, but it tears each one within himself."

Mendes-France admitted that he and his Cabinet had suffered "tortures" over EDC. "And yet," he said, "each of us, and first and foremost the one who heads your government, must face the truth. The truth--and our allies remind us of it everyday--is that Germany will not be excluded forever from her own defense.

"Can we, because the prospect of rearming Germany is painful to us, because to answer yes is cruel and to say no is unrealistic, can we beat about the bushes forever?" Mendes asked. His answer was proud and direct: "A great nation cannot bury its head in the sand when confronted by an unpleasant choice. It must face up, it must choose . . . We must have done with it."

Pages of Protocols. Mendes-France's way of facing up to EDC was to water down the treaty until he thought he could get it through the French Assembly. Mendes' 30 pages of protocols changed EDC so radically that what remained was neither European nor a defense community. His key protocols would have:

P: Eliminated almost all the supranational features of the six-nation European Army;

P: Left France (or any other nation) free to secede from EDC in case 1) Germany is unified, or 2) U.S. and British troops withdraw from the Continent;

P: Kept German troops from being stationed on French soil, while leaving French forces in Germany;

P: Deprived the Germans of the right to promote their own officers for at least the first four years.

Mendees' allies were furious. "Nine-tenths unacceptable," snapped Dutch Foreign Minister Johan Willem Beyen. Cracked the Duesseldorfer Nachrichten: "The only regulation really missing is one requiring German soldiers to turn in their rifles every evening."

Special Train to Brussels. Confronted with such plain-spoken unanimity from his EDC partners, Mendes urgently needed U.S. and British backing. He signally failed to get it from the U.S. John Foster Dulles was exasperated by Mendes' suggestion that Russia would have several months' time--between the French As sembly's approval of the emasculated EDC and final ratification by the French Senate--to talk "concessions" over Germany. Said a tough State Department cable to the British Foreign Office: "A new delaying condition prior to complete ratification [would convince the U.S.] that France cannot be counted on as a reliable partner able to reach decisions."

British Ambassador to France Sir Gladwyn Jebb asked Mendes outright for an explicit guarantee that he would not abandon EDC in return for Soviet "concessions" on Germany. Mendes evaded the question. Nevertheless, as Mendes boarded his special train to Brussels, Jebb was waiting on the platform with a message brought directly from Sir Winston Churchill, promising British support.

Next morning, facing the Foreign Ministers of Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in the Belgian Foreign Ministry, Mendes began: "I could have put EDC as it stood to a vote in the National Assembly, but I am convinced it would have failed. The fact that I have re-examined the problem . . . proves, I hope, that I am a European and a partisan of European union."

"Delicate Situation." The ministers were unconvinced. Mendes insisted that his version of the treaty would still achieve the four basic aims of EDC: to bind Germany to the West, to arm the Germans in Western defense, to strengthen the government of Dr. Adenauer and to prepare the way for European political union. But what the Frenchman failed to see was that the "European" clauses of EDC, which one of his advisers defined as "mystique" were to the other ministers the heart and soul of the treaty. Mendes confronted the conference with what he felt was the inescapable alternative. France would be put in an "extremely delicate situation"; the National Assembly would reject EDC in any form, Mendes-France would fall, a leftist, Popular-Front-type government would succeed him. All this, warned Mendes, would be "a free gift to the Russians."

For once, Mendes' technique of threatening alternatives failed to carry the day. The five other ministers, particularly the German and the Dutch, had already faced up to the consequences of rejecting Mendes' protocols and decided that, bad as those consequences were, the acceptance of an EDC that would make a mockery of a united Europe was infinitely worse. The Netherlands' Johan Willem Beyen gave Mendes a direct answer: "I apologize for not being able to agree with the French proposals." Konrad Adenauer followed, looking grey, tired, and deeply suspicious of the facile Frenchman opposite. The 78-year-old Chancellor objected to Mendes' discriminations against German soldiers, but what he feared most was the possibility that the Frenchman was maneuvering for further delay in the hope of getting Soviet agreement to the neutralization of Germany. Konrad Adenauer too could state unpleasant alternatives: another setback to German hopes of sovereignty would lead disgusted Germans to reject Adenauer's misplaced faith in Western Europe. His government might fall. And with Der Alte gone, who would then control what Adenauer himself calls Germany's "domestic military monster?"

Figuring It Wrong. Mendes was in a corner of his own making. In proposing major changes to suit French right-wingers, he had assumed, without bothering to check with the other Foreign Ministers, that they would have to go along. And he also took as proven that EDC supporters in the French Assembly--Catholics, M.R.P.s and Socialists--would be compelled to vote for his changes. From Paris as well as from Brussels, Mendes learned that he had figured it wrong.

The French Socialist Party announced that "we could not possibly vote for a treaty so disfigured." Writing in Le Figaro "for myself and my friends," Robert Schuman, who as French Foreign Minister signed the original EDC treaty, dropped a bombshell on Mendes' protocols. His most telling argument: Mendes' proposals would increase, not decrease, the danger of a rearmed Germany. "It must be taken into consideration that anything which decreases [European integration] increases by an equal amount German military sovereignty."

Schuman's opposition in Paris confirmed and strengthened Adenauer's and Beyen's in Brussels. Belgium's Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, trying to patch up a compromise, proposed to divide the French protocols into those that the other ministers could agree to without submitting them to their Parliaments, and those "substantive changes" that would require new ratification.

Morning, noon and night Mendes fought like a cat against everything placed in the second category. Occasionally, there with bitterness. At one point Konrad Adenauer emerged for a breath of air, his face ashen with fatigue. To a photographer who snapped his picture, Der Alte murmured sadly: "Underneath it you can write: 'A tired European.' "

What Next? Mendes, too, was tired. Face to face with failure, he got in touch with John Foster Dulles, appealing for U.S. help. Washington stood firm. U.S. Special Envoy David Bruce caught an express to Brussels to talk with Chancellor Adenauer and the French Premier. But Bruce was instructed not to pressure the others into giving way to Mendes-France; he was to affirm that the U.S. also considered Brussels the showdown.

Mendes would not retreat; neither would the others. The last futile session ended at 2:40 a.m. Mendes-France emerged a badly defeated man. Surrounded by 200 newsmen, who blocked the way to his car, the tired little Premier set off through the dark, empty streets to walk the three blocks to the French embassy. He moved slowly, almost defiantly, but when a reporter asked, "What next?", Mendes could only reply: "I honestly don't know. This is a new situation ..."

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