The Rock & the Drift

As old Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, made his way across the eastern half of the U.S. last week, there was something manifestly rocklike about his manner. It was more than his flinty visage, more than his granitic words of advice (see below). In Konrad Adenauer the nation perceived a solid faith that the only way to preserve the West against Communism--smiling or unsmiling--is a steadfast pursuit of the policy of strength. Measured by Adenauer the Rock, it was clear how far the Western allies have drifted since Moscow began its seductive foreign policy aimed at neutralizing Germany and confusing her Western allies.

The London Observer this week reflected a line familiar around the British Foreign Office: "In practice ... we must be prepared to accept an internationally guaranteed status outside NATO for a free, united Germany." After Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called neutralism "obsolete" in his Ames, Iowa speech (TIME, June 18), European newspapers and politicians accused Dulles of trying to restore a "tough" foreign policy behind the convalescing President's back. Along Washington's Embassy Row, diplomats were saying that Adenauer is "the last holdout in the cold war."

The U.S. did not need necessarily to accept Adenauer's thesis that there have been no significant changes inside the Soviet Union. But there was no better authority than Adenauer on the role of Germany in the Western world: "A free Germany is an absolute necessity for the integration of a free Europe. A free Europe is absolutely essential for the free U.S.--the fate of Europe is inseparably linked up with the fate of the U.S. You must lead us because you are the strongest, but if we others do not firmly stand together . . . then in the long run we will be defeated."

At week's end the President took fresh bearings on the Rock and messaged West Germany's President Theodor Heuss: "We know that so long as unity in freedom is withheld from the German people . . . there can be no permanent security in Europe." The occasion for the President's cable befitted his theme: it was June 17, 1956, third anniversary of the celebrated day of revolt when East Berlin boys fought Soviet tanks with stones.

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