Dr. Adenauer's Success
Life is not easy for Dr. Adenauer. He has to hold together a precarious coalition, repel the attacks of a frequently veno- mous opposition, settle a number of difficult problems with the Allied High Commission without sacrificing Ger- many's interests and get agreement on Germany's participation in a European Army without giving the French reason to think he is giving too little or Germans reason to think he is giving too much. In such circumstances the result of last Sunday's elections in the new South West German State (formed by the union of the existing small States of Baden, Wurtemburg- Baden and Wurtemburg-Hohenzollern) must have gratified the Chancellor considerably. Though local issues were naturally not altogether absent the election was fought essen- tially on the official federal programme, particularly German rearmament, and, as at Bonn, the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats stood together as a coalition. Beside the fact that between them they secured 73 out of the 121 seats in the new Land Parliament, against the Social Democratic Party's 38, the increase of 4 per cent. in the Socialist vote (compared with the total vote at the last elections of the three separate provinces) is of negligible importance. It is surprising, indeed, that in the third of the Federal Government's four years of office its opponents should have made such inconsiderable headway. It would, of course, be a mistake to generalise too far from the results of a single provincial election, but there have been other signs than this .of a reassuring underlying stability in the fabric of Western Germany.
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