The Pacts of Paris

The structure of Europe changed last week. In a historic five days, the West's statesmen moved farther and faster than they had in the past two years of frustration and acrimony. West Germany began the week technically still occupied and emerged a proud new sovereign nation. As an earnest of their trust in the new Germany of Konrad Adenauer, the NATO powers welcomed Germany as an equal among equals, and entrusted it with an army which should prove the most formidable component of free Europe's defense.

Seven weeks ago, as John Foster Dulles pointed out, the Western world "faced a crisis of almost terrifying proportions." The European Defense Community, renounced by its parent after everyone else had accepted it, was dead. France was at sullen loggerheads with its allies. The Atlantic alliance itself creaked ominously, and the disgusted U.S. was steeling itself for "agonizing reappraisal." In those seven weeks, the statesmen of the alliance, mobilized by Britain's Anthony Eden, had found new initiatives and fresh will to repair the irreparable.

Curiously, Paris' great achievements were accomplished not with high spirits and eloquent hopes but with stubborn demands, clouded suspicions, dubious cheers. More curiously still, the man who won most in the five days was the man who indifferently let EDC go to its death, and who did not hesitate to threaten the whole painfully contrived structure with last-minute disaster. Others had talked of "glorious visions" and wailed over the intransigence of the French Assembly. Pierre Mendes-France used that intransigence as a tool, and talked not of sentiments but of realities.

The structure of the new Europe was beaten out against the anvil of Mendes-France's realities. He who had helped destroy a dream had made his fellow bargainers settle for his version of the possible. The dreams may have been necessary in the beginning, but the new-style, unsentimental diplomacy of Mendes-France seemed to be just right for now.

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