WEST GERMANY: Set Back, But Secure

Out of West Germany last week came the first warning of the trouble that can flow from the defeat of EDC. In Schleswig-Holstein, the poorest and most discontented of West Germany’s nine states, Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic coalition suffered a setback at the polls. Where Adenauer got 47% of the vote last year, his slate last week got only 32%, a drop of 250,000 votes. The opposition Social Democrats, who got 26.5% of the vote last time, actually outdrew the Christian Democrats by 11,000 votes.

Nonetheless, the headlines around the world next day were misleading. The voting was only for the state legislature, and even there, with the help of small parties, the Christian Democrats will be able to keep control. The vote was indeed a rebuff to 78-year-old Konrad Adenauer, but it was not a threat to his continuance in office. No matter how local elections go, his term runs until 1957, and-his two-thirds majority in the national Bundestag is the largest in Western Europe.