Gathering at the Grave

Scores of high-ranking guests attending the funeral of Konrad Adenauer were posing for pictures outside Bonn's Villa Hammerschmidt, the official home of German Presidents. Suddenly a photographer asked Lyndon Johnson to shake hands with Charles de Gaulle. A moment of embarrassed silence. Then Johnson instinctively smiled and reached out his hand. The imperious French President, whose relations with the U.S. have been steadily cooling, did likewise, and the two hands hovered in a brief clasp. The two men had just started to withdraw their hands when West German President Heinrich Luebke, as if alarmed that the handshake had not lasted longer, grabbed both Johnson's and De Gaulle's hands and tried to join them together again. He only managed to get his own hands entwined in a three-way tangle that Charles de Gaulle seemed to find distinctly unamusing.

It was not the most satisfactory handshake in history, nor did it carry any special significance. But it was better than nothing. It was, in fact, much like the funeral gathering in the distinctly nonmetropolitan city of Bonn, which had never before played host at once to so many of the free world's great and near great. No major decisions were made and no declarations issued, but the sad occasion did give the West's leaders a chance to talk with one another.

Pomp & Glory. The two heads of state, twelve prime ministers, 18 foreign ministers and delegations from 53 other countries had come primarily to honor the man whom West Germany buried with the pomp and glory that his achievements warranted. Flanked by flowers, rows of his decorations and a military honor guard, the body of Konrad Adenauer lay in state in Cologne's soaring cathedral. As the country observed seven days of mourning, thousands of Germans, many in black, some weeping, filed past his bier in final tribute.

Television carried the pontifical Requiem Mass throughout Western Europe, beyond the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia, by satellite to the U.S. and parts of Asia. After the ceremony, German Catholic and Protestant churchmen and the visiting dignitaries followed the coffin the 385 yards from the cathedral to the Rhine, where it was placed aboard a German navy patrol boat for a 20-mile trip upstream to Adenauer's village of Rhondorf. There, in a private hillside cemetery, his body was lowered into a grave alongside the flower-decked ones of his two wives and infant son.

"Step Back." In the funeral procession, Johnson and De Gaulle walked side by side, with only the short German President between them. Yet they managed to ignore each other. On the two other times when they met during the Bonn ceremonies, it was obvious that they had drifted even farther apart since their last none too effusive meeting at John Kennedy's funeral. De Gaulle was correct, but hardly cordial. Johnson stuck by his own plan of how to handle le grand Charles. "You've seen boys playing," he had told his aides shortly before leaving for Europe. "One holds out his arm and says, 'Spit over it.' The one boy spits and the other moves his arm, and of course the boy misses and spits on the arm, and then the first one gets mad and wants to fight. Well, De Gaulle is like the boy daring the other one to spit over his arm. But I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to step back." He suggested that De Gaulle come to the U.S. for a visit, but did not press the invitation when De Gaulle chose to treat it as a mere pleasantry.

The Gap. Johnson also met twice with Italian Premier Aldo Moro, tried to reassure him that the U.S.-sponsored nuclear nonproliferation treaty would not handicap non-nuclear nations from fully developing the industrial applications of atomic energy. He talked for 45 minutes with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, encouraging him to go ahead with his decision to apply for Common Market membership.

But Johnson talked most with Kurt Kiesinger. It was the President's first chance to meet the new West German Chancellor, and he found the tall Swabian a far more formidable conferee than the compliant Ludwig Erhard had been. The first meeting was supposed to be only a 15-minute hello session; it lasted eight times that long. Kiesinger brought up the nettlesome matter of U.S.-German consultations; he was upset that when the U.S. recently decided to pull out of Germany 20,000 troops and 144 F-105 fighter-bombers, he had learned of the moves in the press and through leaks from low-ranking U.S. officers.

Kiesinger had barely mentioned the topic when Lyndon Johnson broke in. "I hear some German complaints that we haven't been consulting enough," he said. "Now I can't understand that. As a matter of fact, I have received more visitors lately from West Germany than from any other country." Unruffled. Kiesinger explained that what was lacking was not the quantity but the quality of the consultations. "I don't know what you mean," said the President, "I have the best Cabinet ministers there are--the finest Secretary of State and the finest Secretary of Defense." Kiesinger explained that by quality he really meant timing; after all, consultations are not worth much after the decision has already been made.

Changing Relations. The second meeting went somewhat better. Alone except for interpreters in the living room of the Chancellor's bungalow on the grounds of Palais Schaumburg, Johnson reassured Kiesinger that the U.S. still placed higher priority on maintaining a strong NATO than on achieving a nonproliferation pact with the Soviet Union. As a result of Kiesinger's protests, Johnson agreed to withdraw fewer of the fighter-bombers than he had intended to bring home, but he stuck by the U.S. plan to reduce ground forces in Germany by 20,000 men. He also promised that Washington from now on would consult with Bonn on matters of mutual importance before the decisions were made.

After more than two hours of talks, the two men parted, and Johnson boarded Air Force One to return to Washington. He left Bonn somewhat sobered by the new independence and shifting attitudes of Western Europe. Konrad Adenauer, with his love of getting down to the cold facts, would have been pleased that his funeral brought the President face to face with the changing realities of U.S.-European relations.

-A rugby term meaning sideline.

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