WESTERN EUROPE: Cook’s Tour

The bustle of European statesmen that began with the death of EDC slowed to a walk last week, and the anger simmered down to workaday asperity. Yet, oddly enough, the new pace did not necessarily mean a slackening of urgency; it reflected a feeling that the difficult process of rearming the Germans had better be done right this time.

Britain’s suggestion of a nine-power conference to be held in London this week was politely shunted aside by Mendès-France (who murmured “premature”), by Adenauer (who feared that haste might result in another Brussels brawl), and by the U.S. State Department, which wasn’t ready with ideas yet.

Restrictions Voluntary. Campaigning last week in a provincial election in Schleswig-Holstein, Konrad Adenauer came out strongly for an end of the Allied occupation of West Germany and for unfettered German sovereignty. “We ask this,” said der Alte, “for our national honor and our justifiable national feelings.” Once Germany has its sovereignty, he said, it would apply for admission to NATO and consent to restrictions on German rearmament. The restrictions would have to be voluntary, for since the death of EDC not even Adenauer will agree to discriminations imposed by outsiders; the restrictions would also have to be real, for otherwise France would blackball the German bid for NATO membership.

At this point the British government moved in with rare and welcome dash.

The Tory government was in a hurry, for unless some quick solution could be found for German rearmament, its Labor opponents might be tempted to cash in on the mounting Germanophobia being whipped up in Britain (TIME, Aug. 23). Sir Winston Churchill snorted that it was time for “action, not talk”; the London Times brooded that unless “something is done,” future generations might remember August 1954 “as almost as dark a date for Europe as August 1914.”

Made-in-England. The man chosen to “do something” was Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. With two aides Eden set out in an R.A.F. plane on a “Cook’s tour” (the Foreign Office code name for his trip) of the six EDC nations. Starting at Brussels, where he and the Benelux foreign ministers reached “complete agreement” on a method of rearming the Germans, Eden flew on to Bonn where Chancellor Adenauer was waiting at the airport. This week Eden flies to Rome and Paris, peddling a made-in-England solution: German “adherence” to NATO, with “adequate safeguards.”

The British now believe that guarantees against a too-strong Germany can be built into the Atlantic alliance—by lengthening NATO’s life from 25 to 50 years, strengthening its central authority, notably in the Central European sector, where the Germans would be deployed. To limit German strength without galling German pride, the British point to one of EDC’s least known but most useful devices: a ban on the manufacture of atomic, bacteriological and jet-propelled weapons in “strategically exposed areas”—i.e., in West Germany.

Following his tour, Eden still hopes to convene a nine-nation meeting in London. Face to face, he believes that Mendès-France and Adenauer can work out a series of “adequate safeguards” before NATO takes up the question of German admission, probably in October. France willing, the chances were growing that some time this fall. West Germany will get back its sovereignty and be “associated” with NATO. And if Paris says no? The British at least are for a series of ad hoc bilateral pacts between the U.S., Britain and Germany, so that the Germans can be tied to NATO through a Balkan pact-type arrangement, similar to that which links Yugoslavia to NATO partners Greece and Turkey.

The Kremlin last week congratulated France on its “patriotic act” in rejecting EDC and revived its Berlin offer of a one-big-Europe collective security pact. On this point at least, the U.S., Britain and France could quickly agree: in identical notes, they coldly turned down the Kremlin’s sly invitation.