The Necessary Guest

When the Franco-German treaty of perpetual friendship was signed 21 years ago, it seemed only fitting that it stipulate biennial, home-and-home visits for the two heads of state. As it has turned out, the treaty has been marked by almost perpetual discord since its inception, and French and German views on everything from NATO and European unity to attitudes toward the Soviet Union and the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam have increasingly diverged. Last week German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard received French President Charles de Gaulle in Bonn as the treaty prescribes--but De Gaulle clearly went only to do his duty, and Erhard plainly regarded the Frenchman only as a necessary guest.

Even before he arrived, in fact, De Gaulle contrived to show his disdain for Erhard's hopes for a united Europe and slap the German's warm support for the U.S. in Viet Nam. "We do not want a supranational Europe," sniffed De Gaulle at the annual Elysee garden party for parliamentarians. "For us, that would be to want to disappear." When someone suggested that the U.S. had been formed by a kind of supranational fusion, De Gaulle delivered one of his little historical lectures. "America was virgin territory," he said. "All that was there for the pioneers was the bones of the redskins they had knocked off. And that did not stop them from having a civil war, which is still going on." As for Viet Nam, said the general, "the Americans, who've got their dirty affair going in Viet Nam with their tanks and their trucks and their air planes, have got to realize they're not alone in the world with the Soviet Un ion. When they realize that, it will be better, because we have nothing against them."

With that gratuity, De Gaulle was off to Bonn the next morning. He was given a carefully correct greeting at Wahn Airport from an Erhard bolstered by his recent warm reception in Washington. But conspicuously absent were the festoons of flags and the cheering crowds that marked De Gaulle's first triumphal appearance in Bonn in 1962. Still, with national elections looming this year for them both, De Gaulle and Erhard tacitly agreed to disagree without visible image-damaging acrimony. For his part, Erhard agreed to leave open for the time being any increase in the Common Market's control over the Six's farm financing policies--a creeping tide of supranationalism De Gaulle is anxious to arrest. De Gaulle in turn consented to a vague agreement to consider a summit conference of the six Common Market heads of state this year to discuss European political organization. Under the circumstances, it was, as a German spokesman put it, "a good result."

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