A Bonn diary
GERMANY MALCOLM RUTHERFORD
Bonn—To the comparative newcomer, al- most the nicest discovery about Bonn is that it turns out to be so dreadfully. in., efficient. Contrary to popular belief, Ger- man trains don't run on time. Trains which are billed to have dining cars frequently don't. The telephone system is rather worse than in London or Paris. Getting furniture delivered from the local shops takes con- siderably longer than it would take Harrods to deliver to the Outer Hebrides. The news- agent continually sends the wrong news- papers and sends some of them twice over. If one is not up by seven o'clock they are quite likely to have been stolen. In a country with a massive milk surplus there is no doorstep delivery. The packaged mild from the supermarkets is almost undrink- able. The service in restaurants is appalling.
Relief that the wirtschaftswunder is not all it was made out to be turns to infuria- tion when a waiter takes half an hour to take an order, the bus from the airport fails to leave on time, laundry takes a week, or it turns out to be impossible to find a taxi. Both feelings, however, should be tempered with the reflection that the Ger- mans just use their resources differently. They are inefficient only by British stan- dards. In England it is not only the social services which spoil one, it is the services in general. In Germany they are so busy doing more productive things that there are few resources left for the service trade. Given the German labour shortage, it is a waste of people to employ them as waiters or milkmen.
Anyone used to bemoaning the difficul- ties of finding someone to come and do a small, domestic job in London should try it in Bonn. You will find him in the end, but at a price. London by contrast is the most civilised, comfortable, cushioned and the cheapest capital in the industrialised world.
On the strength of its healthy trade balance, people exaggerate how rich Germany is. In many ways it feels a country far poorer than Britain. The educational system, for example, is admitted by everyone to be chaotic because there are so many people to teach and so few teachers. Congestion on the roads is as bad as almost anywhere else, despite the inheritance of the pre-war autobahns, and the housing situation is much worse. According to recent figures.- five per cent of the population live in con- ditions officially described as seriously over- crowded. That may sound very little until you look at the definition. 'Seriously over- crowded' means more than two persons to a room; and the kitchen in the statistics is couiited as a room. I, who sought a modest, functional, London-sized apartment, was immediately suspected of wishing to bring in hosts of in-laws or of keeping a harem. Where people have been rehoused, it has often been in conditions of depressing ugli- ness.
You would expect the Social Democrats to exploit these things in the elections, but in fact everybody knows that conditions are bad not because of government neglect but because there has been such a very long way to go. That is one of the reasons why there seems so little effective difference between the parties. They all agree on the aims because the aims are so obvious.
The city of which Bonn unfailingly reminds me is Caracas. Of course, the differences outweigh the similarities—Caracas has no Rhine, and Bonn has no barrios, but the similarities are still striking. There is the same sprawling higgledy-piggledy develop- ment of cities built along a valley, the same impossible highway running through it. the same impermanence, the same feeling that any scrap of land spotted as fit for de- velopment today will be built upon to- morrow, the same American influences. Le Carre in A Small Town in Germany notes the incongruity of the British Em- bassy lying by wasteland, the headquarters of the Red Cross, the Social Democrat Archives and a Coca-Cola depot. Yet, in this place of insatiable thirst, the plentiful supply of Coca-Cola does more to ensure stability than the Red Cross, the British Embassy, or even the Social Democrats could ever do.
It is terribly difficult to get people outside Germany to believe it, but the chances of Franz-Josef Strauss becoming West Ger- man Chancellor still look rather less than his chances of becoming President of a United States of Europe. Apart from the fact that the Germans already have a very successful Chancellor in Herr Kiesinger, the following should be remembered. Ger- many tends to be governed by coalitions: other parties would be more than reluctant to go into a coalition headed by Herr Strauss; therefore Christian Democrats, knowing they might need a coalition to be able to stay in office, would not easily elect him leader. Secondly, Herr Strauss is generally regarded as being illiberal. He was obliged to leave the Defence Ministry, for example, because he sought to interfere with the freedom of the press. Sufficient Christian Democrat politicians, who rather than the electorate as a whole would make the election, hold this against him. Finally, Herr Strauss is a Bavarian, a man with a purely regional base. This factor alone could be decisive in keeping him out.
His chance would come only if the Chris- tian Democrats started to do so badly at the national level while at the same time his own sister party, the Social Christians, continued to do so outstandingly well in Bavaria that the contrast was stark enough to induce a send-for-Strauss movement. Herr Strauss certainly looks after his own region closely enough to suggest that he has this possibility in mind, but so far there is no sign whatsoever of its coming about. One suspects that he believes that it will be easier to incorporate Bavaria and himself into a Federal Europe than to in- corporate it fully into the Federal Re- public. That is why Herr Strauss is one of the greatest Federalists in Europe.
The British Ambassador here, a man not generally regarded as the most devastating addition to the social scene, endeared him- self to me the other day by becoming the first man I have ever heard in spoken English to use the form 'fora' as the plural of forum. Surely no man so precise with his language could be a bad diplomat. Excuse for favourite Foreign Office joke: J. H. Thomas. as Minister of State—'1 'ave an 'ell of an 'eadache'; Foreign Office-- 'why don't you try an aspirate?' The old spirit is still alive.
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