The Hitchhiker

At a Washington reception last week. President Kennedy raised his glass in welcome to a visitor. "I think most of you know something of his life," Kennedy said, ''his distinguished service in World War I when he lost his leg, his five years in Dachau, which tested the strength of his political convictions, and his efforts since that time to maintain the integrity and security of his country." The visitor was Alfons Gorbach, 63, Chancellor of Austria, and his mission in Washington was plain: to get U.S. backing for Austria's application for associate membership in the Common Market.

A lawyer by training and a resourceful negotiator, Christian Socialist Gorbach symbolizes his country's mellow talent for compromise and conciliation; after Dachau he urged a forgive-and-forget attitude toward ex-Nazis not guilty of specific crimes. (" 'Good Lord,' I asked myself, 'how often shall victory and persecution alternate with each other?' ") But last week even Gorbach's conciliatory skills could not budge the U.S. from its stand opposing Market entry of neutral nations.

The U.S. acknowledges that, unlike traditional neutrals Sweden and Switzerland, with whom Austria filed a joint membership application, Austria is in a "special situation," thrust into involuntary neutrality as a Soviet condition in its 1955 peace treaty. U.S. officials appreciate Gorbach's argument that, while Austria is neutral, it is not neutralist; its sympathies are with the West. Moreover, argues Gorbach, 55% of Austria's trade is with Common Market countries. But Washington feels that neutrals should not share in the economic advantages of the Market unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their national sovereignty in economic, and eventually political, matters--a price none want to pay.

Gorbach got a word of advice from one U.S. official: he might receive a better hearing from the Market nations if Austria applied separately, instead of in conjunction with the so-called "voluntary" neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland.

"Austria is like the pretty girl hitchhiking," went the Washington homily. "A car crowded with men slows down to pick her up, but speeds up when her two boy friends come out of their hiding place in the ditch to try to get a ride too."

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