Discontented Ally

In Bonn there were two kinds of discontent last week: the politicians, upset because Chancellor Adenauer was not letting them in on his international dealings; the Chancellor, upset because his allies were not taking him into their confidence.

In one month, der Alte had received at least two letters from President Eisenhower, one from Premier Khrushchev and several from President de Gaulle, and hugged them to himself. He treated Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano highhandedly, ordering him to draft communications, then editing and sending them off without bothering to let Brentano know the final results. While the Foreign Office remained ignorant, one man continued to share the Chancellor's secrets: State Secretary Hans Globke, the indispensable confidential clerk who--his enemies never let him forget--25 years ago wrote the official commentary on the Nazis' racial laws. Last week, when the Bundestag held its first foreign-policy debate in 18 months, Adenauer did not bother to speak. Members could only guess what lay behind his dark and ambiguous warning at Baden-Baden last month that Germany had still to "pay" for World War II.

Adenauer himself was reported to be shocked and angered to find that his ally De Gaulle had arranged Khrushchev's visit to Paris without first consulting him. Although Adenauer had discussed and approved in advance the French President's moves to block an early summit, he was finding De Gaulle a difficult ally. He had been troubled when De Gaulle pulled his Mediterranean navy out from NATO control. He was profoundly embarrassed when De Gaulle remarked that the Oder-Neisse line between East Germany and Poland should be Germany's permanent eastern frontier. Recently, German dignity was affronted when two French destroyers intercepted the West German freighter Bilbao and forced it to put into Cherbourg on the suspicion (unfounded, as it turned out) that it was carrying arms to the Algerian rebels.

The German-French alliance is "the laughing stock of the world," cried Bonn's General-Anzeiger, and the influential Stuttgarter Zeitung complained: "De Gaulle has assigned us the role of mere pedestal for his power." The long-moribund refugee organizations--which claim to speak for more than 12 million Germans exiled from German lands now in Communist hands--visited Adenauer to warn of restiveness in their ranks since the Oder-Neisse talk started. The presidents of four North German states wrote, warning the Chancellor not to bind the Federal Republic so closely to France and the Common Market countries, that traditional North German trade ties to Britain and Scandinavia would be hurt.

This week, hobbling on a cane to prop a leg hurt on an Italian holiday last summer, the old Chancellor prepared to fly to London to persuade Britain that the Federal Republic has not put all its eggs in De Gaulle's basket.

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