Smiles on the Rhine

After Paris, Dean Rusk flew to West Berlin and then to Bonn. The Berlin stop was a formality, a mere 2 3/4-hour duty visit to sign the city's famed Golden Book, confer briefly with Mayor Willy Brandt, peer over the Wall. Although Rusk predicted that some day this "affront to human dignity" would come down, sensitive Berliners complained that the Rusk visit had been perfunctory.

The Old Days. There was nothing perfunctory about Rusk's mission to Bonn where crusty old Chancellor Konrad Adenauer needed some buttering up after his angry May quarrel with Washington over the negotiations with Russia. Rusk fairly smothered der Alte with kind words. "You never heard such flattery." said one witness at the first meeting. Over dinner in the Palais Schaumburg's chandeliered Grosse Kabinettssaal, Rusk softened Adenauer with long reminiscences of his graduate student days in Berlin 30 years ago, of tours in the Rhineland, of the Weimar era. As the wine and champagne flowed, Rusk rose to toast U.S.-West German friendship, then turned to the old Chancellor with the ultimate and justified compliment. Seldom in a lifetime, said Rusk, did one have the opportunity to meet such a "historic personality." Next morning, in Adenauer's spacious office by the Rhine, the pair got down to business. Der Alte was anxious to present his new plan to immediately draw up a contract for Europe's political unity. Let those countries sign that wished to do so; the rest could come in later. Adenauer feared that unity might be delayed in definitely if everyone waited on Britain's entry into the Common Market. Rusk was all for unity, but thought little of this piecemeal approach. He strongly urged that the British be brought in as soon as possible: only with Britain's membership could the U.S. implement its plans for political, economic and military cooperation with the new Europe.

Faded Crisis. Not until then did the subject get around to Wrest Berlin. Only a few weeks ago, it would have been uppermost in everyone's mind. Things seemed a lot less pressing now that Moscow had, for the time being, taken off the heat. In Bucharest last week, Nikita Khrushchev was even saying, "The U.S. threatened us with war over Berlin, but I do not see any reason to go to war." Rusk and Adenauer probably saw this as vindication of sorts for their own policies. Rusk had always felt he could talk the crisis to death in his long negotiations with the Russians; Adenauer might argue that his own veto of possible concessions had forced Moscow to back down. It was clear that the Chancellor was still adamantly opposed to discussion of an international authority to control Berlin's access routes. Said der Alte, "As I have told you before, the Soviets will give you nothing on major points, and only bargain in order to get concessions on minor points."

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