Two Old Men
From SARAH GA1NHAM BONN THEY are so old, both of them—de Gaulle has aged so startingly that he looks almost as old as the Chancellor, who is beginning to look like his own death mask, and who plays host as if this were his party and his alone. They think and talk of the future but it is not, and cannot be, their future; it belongs to others and they think of it in terms already past.
A melancholy that is not entirely yesterday's tearing wind nor today's teeming rain is present and real. The President, who is not by chance spending half his State visit in the Rhineland and the Ruhr—Bonn is only part of it—plunges through canal waters and the streaming rain to Duisburg to eradicate from Ruhr memories the figure of Poincare in 1923. Only the British cling tenaciously to the -legend that the French are always in the right; Charles de Gaulle, deter- mined to save himself—France—from the pieds noirs, from the OAS, from isolation between the Russians and the Americans, knows very well they were not. He wants friends here and his speeches repeat the two themes, unity between the two countries and his desire to -reach 'the people.' He offers the Germans honorary Frenchness; and not only the upper classes, al- ready won to the offer, but the common people must want it, too. In the response of the crowds the twin characteristics of the Germans are con- stantly seen: their quite extraordinary provin- ciality (considering how in the middle' they are and how washed through by every wave of European history) and their longing to be liked - and understood.
Waiting in the docile and good-humoured crowd, one sees and hears that this is for them a show put on for fun, even if there is no market today, which is a nuisance. Two women discuss, with the weather (horrible) and their personal affairs (involved) whether the arrangements are the same ones made every year for the Carnival procession on the Monday before Lent. A mild crunch is followed by a flutter of excitement, reaching us from another part of the crowd_ Later, one hears the police thought it to be a plastique; the crowd does not think of that. Someone opines that a flagpole has been blown down—is anyone hurt? . . .
Like dark Ash, making no sound in the chatter, shining black Mercedes glide through the narrow channel left in the flood of people. The mayoral party has arrived and joins the worried officials from the protocol department More police, thousands of police in green with patent-leather helmets. The President when he arrives—punctuality cannot be the courtesy of Presidents in Bonn's hopeless road conditions There was a Young Man in a tree. Who was horribly bored by a Bee: When they said, 'Does it buzz?' he replied, 'Yes, it does!' 'It's a regular brute of a Bee!' —gets out of his motor and proceeds afoot, shaking hands the while. The police do their best to prevent this, but the tall Frenchman is one better and gets his way, and the crowd is touched by this evidence that they are liked, accepted.
The police band—police again—strikes up the 'Marseillaise; but the crowd, not knowing the tune, goes on chattering and laughing at the show. But then the band begins, evidently under orders not to sound martial, to play Haydn's hymn, gently, almost tenderly, and complete silence falls.
The Mayor is not listened to. De Gaulle makes his speech, apparently not reading it, in German and the crowd accept this as if it were not sur- prising. Applause when 7ranco-German friend- ship is mentioned several times, and when the great man calls the German people great. But the crowd is pleased rather than delighted; re- spectful perhaps; almost self-congratulatory as if they were thinking, 'You see, he does like us.' Later the flutter of speculation inseparable from such occasions is caused by the President's speech at the State banquet when he spoke of 'unity' between the two countries—the rest of Europe not mentioned, either inside the Six or outside. But it is very noticeable that while Chancellor Adenauer and the President talk together in private, M. de Murville is talking to Herr Schroeder who has twice contradicted Dr.
Adenauer's conception of the next step in Europe in the last few days and who publishes an analysis of his policy as the government policy during the visit. This analysis is much concerned with Great Britain's entry into Europe. It is clear that the French know, and are meant to know, that the Government is no longer simply the Chancellor.
Further speeches follow all on the same note. De Gaulle does not attempt to hide his wooing of the people and the Government; it is clear that he believes the offer of France's friendship in some undetailed union to be the highest good that could come to any nation. So do the Germans, and yet . . .
What has Germany to gain from a more ex- clusive relationship with France than already exists inside the EEC? Federal Germany's in- dustrial potential is larger than France's by far; her population is larger, the rate of productivity- growth faster. On the one hand is the chance at the large British market through EEC member- ship and the expansion of trade and development in the 'white' Commonwealth—particularly, Canada interests German firms. Then there is the military assurance of continued British help in the defence of central Europe which must not be put in question.
On the other hand, a more exclusive friend- ship with France, which is still very vague, with Britain at arm's length or even outside altogether, and the threat of American disapproval. And probably trouble with the other four of the Six. J does not add up to much advantage to Ger- many, and in the long run it wouldn't make much sense to the French either.
Perhaps it is true, as one 0: two commentators have hinted, that the whole matter is a personal affair of two old men; one of whom cannot for- give the British for having befriended him in the days of France's humiliation 'and the other who has aluays (with perhaps some reason) disliked the British more or less secretly. What is hap- pening in Europe cannot be moulded by two men, however great. It is the people who stay in the workshops and ofEces and who are irri- tated by the interruptions of traffic, who are having the real say. And in the background, hardly mentioned but written large in black letters and never forgotten is the word 'Berlin.'
Previous page
