Nein!

A thousand officials from outside went in to mount watch at polling places. Red-and-white border barricades dropped down to keep out everybody else. Then some 650,000 citizens of the industrial Saar basin freely cast their votes. The question: Would they accept the "Europeanizing" of their territory, and thereby advance the cause of European unity and Franco-German amity?

The polls had barely closed this week when the answer began to appear: a loud and disturbing nein. By a margin of more than two to one, Saarlanders, German-speaking and German-oriented, had rejected a plan giving them political autonomy under the new Western European Union (TIME, Oct. 17) and continued postwar economic union with France.

The course they were choosing instead was not clear. In their minds, the Saarlanders were choosing reunion with their native Germany, though they had no chance of such a choice. Actually, they were choosing to begin a long and tortuous quarrel within the Western family. France warned in advance that if the Saar voted nein, French control would go on as before. Sincere men in Paris and Bonn had done their best, but now the old wound was open and throbbing again.

As the Saarlanders' choice became clear, the champions of Europeanization were first to dramatize its impact. Saar Premier Johannes Hoffmann, figurehead of the Saar-for-Europe movement, promptly resigned. From his sickbed in Bonn, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, urgent advocate of a vote for Europeanization, was said to be "deeply disturbed," and he called his Cabinet into emergency session to consider what to do next.

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