Lining Up

Queen Victoria's cynical old Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (1834-41 ) used to tell his Cabinet: "I don't care what we say, but we'd better all say the same thing." As the May 11 date for the Western foreign ministers' conference with Russia drew near, the British seemed to have accepted Lord Melbourne's worldly counsel. At last week's session of U.S., British, French and West German planners in London, the British in effect pulled back from the last remaining proposal that Prime Minister Macmillan had put forward in Moscow. The Foreign Office denied that it had ever even thought of de facto recognition of the divided state of Germany, and for the first time made "thinning out" of troops in Europe conditional on German reunification, and thus unlikely.

The private deliberations of Allied "working groups" took place in a general atmosphere of 1) public indifference and the general conviction that Khrushchev was no longer waving ultimatums over Berlin, and 2) allegations that the British were too soft, the French and Germans too hard, and the U.S. leaderless (see PRESS). But inside the working meetings, a common plan has been generally agreed upon and is now, it is said, being "refined." Essentially, it ties a political settlement for Germany to later military readjustments (TIME, April 13).

In somewhat hurt tones, insiders insist that the only real plan before the house is basically American, despite the popular British impression that only Britain is supplying the ideas and imagination, which other nations are frustrating. What is still to be "refined" is whether to issue the Western plan as a package at Geneva, or to break it to the Russians bit by bit.

The Adenauer government has little enthusiasm for offering the Russians any concessions at all, but the first intercession by Christian Herter as Secretary of State was to send an emphatic note to the London negotiators in favor of making the entire Western proposal public on May 10, the day before the Geneva conference opens.

In Lancashire last week, less ebullient than he was a few weeks ago about the opportunities ahead, Prime Minister Macmillan declared that neither the foreign ministers' conference nor the summit conference to follow represents more than "the beginning of a period of negotiations" to improve East-West relations. In a private speech to Conservative M.P.s, Macmillan also made it clear that he considers Herter a "new man," and the British (and specifically Macmillan himself) to be best qualified by experience to lead the West's diplomatic approach. Accordingly, the Prime Minister has given up any thought of calling a British general election this spring, and may even postpone one until next year.

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