Horse-Trading in Bonn
THE Germans undeniably do have a facility for straining the loyalty of their friends and allies second to none. The ignoble spectacle of the horse-trading that has been going on for nearly two months in Bonn, in order that Dr. Adenauer might cling to office a bit longer, has been one to tarnish badly his record of firmness, democracy and honourable dealing. Now Der Alle is back, but at the cost of a series of humiliating and potentially dangerous concessions to Herr Mende (and more particularly to the extreme wing of Herr Mende's supporters), and at the cost of a great increase in cynicism about the Germans' motives and attitudes in other Western countries. And the wretched business of the Yugoslav citizen arrested in Munich on a Nazi charge of killing German soldiers during the occupation of Yugo- slavia did nothing to reassure those whose con- fidence in Federal Germany's genuine desire to break with the past had been shaken in these last few weeks. Of course, local judicial authorities in all countries get out of hand from time to time; the magistrates of Swindon once made Britain a nine-days' laughing-stock. But Germany is in a far weaker position than most countries to afford such exercises; and the shuffling and bartering in Bonn have done nothing to strengthen her.
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