The New Flirtation

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer has long regarded Prime Minister Harold Macmillan as a man who may not have West Germany's true interests at heart. But last week Host Adenauer greeted a visiting Macmillan with a smiling "My dear friend," soon was toasting the Queen over venison, sherbet and fine wines.

Macmillan's recent tough note to Khrushchev did much to allay Adenauer's pre-summit fears that British eagerness to negotiate with the Soviets had made Britain "soft" on Berlin and West Germany. Adenauer was also mindful of the growing split in Europe between the Common Market Six (to which Germany belongs) and Britain's Outer Seven. Such a division, muses Adenauer, could only serve Moscow's interests at a time when he thinks the U.S. election is creating a "vacuum" in Western leadership.

In four hours of conference-table talk and over after-dinner cigars and coffee, der Alte hinted at diplomatic concessions sure to make Britain's mouth water. Ade nauer seemed willing to slow down the pace of the Common Market tariff changes, even ready to discuss the knotty "special problems" such as preferential Commonwealth tariffs, which the British claim make it impossible for them to join the Common Market in its present form. Nothing was settled, but technicians on both sides set to work seeking areas of compromise. "They've put a good deal of water in the Common Market wine," exulted one high British diplomat.

How far Adenauer goes in courting Britain depends chiefly on France's Charles de Gaulle. Three weeks ago in a meeting with Adenauer at Rambouillet, De Gaulle pressed on the Germans his dreams of a new European political structure--perhaps a permanent series of European summit meetings or a permanent consultative secretariat for political coordination. Still intent on establishing French leadership of the Continent, De Gaulle was trying to create a counterweight to the U.S. within the Western alliance. Adenauer regards the U.S. alliance as basic to Bonn's for eign policy and thinks De Gaulle's dream dangerous. Accordingly, falling back on the technique with which wives have brought straying husbands to heel since the dawn of time, the shrewd old Chancellor embarked on a new flirtation.

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