THREE MEN
INCOMPARABLY the most important men in the Western World today are Mr. Churchill, General Eisenhower and Dr. Adenauer. It is sad that France can produce no one to put in the same category, Or anywhere near it, but France has chosen so to conduct her affairs that no single man can remain in office long enough to achieve real great- ness. The nearest to that in recent years has been M. Robert Schuman. Our German correspondent in an article on a later page indicates what it has meant to Dr. Adenauer to have a man like the late French Foreign Minister to negotiate with across the Rhine. But the salient fact is that M. Schuman is now the late Foreign Minister, and Dr. Adenauer must begin over again with M. Bidault. Our Paris correspondent, whose article this week undesignedly chimes well with that of his German colleague, is satisfied that there will be no radical change in French foreign policy, in particular as regards the European Defence Community. It is to be hoped he is right; but M. Mayer's new Ministry clearly enjoys only the most precarious tenure, and if M. Mayer goes out M. Bidault goes with him. For elements of stability, therefore, it is necessary to turn to the three statesmen named above, subject to the qualification that a General Election is due in Germany in June, and it is not to be assumed necessarily that Dr. Adenauer will be Chancellor of the Federal Republic in July. But that is nearly six months ahead. Meanwhile Mr. Churchill is more firmly established than he was on the morrow of the General Election in 1951, and General Eisenhower is about to enter on a four-year tenure of office terminable, within that limit, only by death. In these three men the world must place its trust in the months immediately ahead. .
It is on General Eisenhower that the eyes of humanity will be fixed next Tuesday. That will be his crowded hour of glorious life, when he delivers his First (perhaps his only) Inaugural, and sets the line for American policy for the next two years at least. In that period, even in the five months and more during which Dr. Adenauer can count on being in office, immensely much may happen for good or ill. Paradoxically enough, Mr. Churchill is for the moment the least important of the three men. America, with her immense financial and material resources, wields, and mdst wield, more power in the Western world for good or ill than any other State. General Eisenhower is far from being supreme in the United States. The Ametican Constitution has seen to that. But assuming office with the prestige of a sweeping electoral victory behind him he need fear little serious opposition in at any rate the first half of his first Congressional term. His policy is not to be predicted in any detail. But this at least is certain : it will be radically different from what Senator Taft's would have been.. It will be surprising if next Tuesday the new President does not lay stress rather on the service America can render to the world than on the material advan- tages America can secure in the world. It is of the first importance that he knows Europe as he does and has worked as closely and harmoniously with Mr. Churchill as he has. Speculation about what passed between the two men in New York last week is idle, and rumour, however confident, may be disregarded. What is certain is that the conversations which took place were beneficial to both, and that any doubts about the opportuneness of Mr. Churchill's brief visit to America at this time have been decisively -dispelled.
If the main issues to be dealt with in the coming year are to be defined, they reduce' themselves to two, the problem of Asia and the problem of Europe, so vast that between them they cover almost half the universe. On a closer analysis what emerge as the primary tasks are the restoration of peace in Korea and the consolidation of the defence of Western Europe. From our own point of view the latter is the more immediately important. All is not going well in Western Europe. General Ridgway has uttered repeated, stern and necessary warnings of the inadequacy of the forces as arrayed against the possible aggression from the east. To the actual numerical reckoning must be added, no doubt, a computation of the superiority in atomic weapons enjoyed by America and Britain over the Soviet Union, though it may be doubted whether anyone on earth knows what in fact that superiority is. Whatever it may be, it does little to discount the value of land and air forces, in both of which Russia's predominance is considerable and unquestioned. N.A.T.O. needs more men and more aeroplanes, more tanks and more guns. For the men it can look most hopefully to Germany, for the guns and muni- tions to the United States. It can only get them if the European Defence Community treaty is ratified by both Germany and France and if the threats of a curtailment of American aid for Europe are defeated by General Eisenhower and his supporters in Congress. In regard to E.D.C., Dr. Adenauer is doing all, and almost more than all, that one man could do. He is shot at from both sides. His Socialists under Herr 011enhauer are as irreconcilably hostile to the ratification of the E.D.C. treaty as they were under Dr. Schumacher. And he has to reach agree- ment with a France represented by a palpably unstable Govern- ment including no M. Schuman and demanding various acceptable or inacceptable modifications of the treaty.
This is a grave situation, and the Chancellor did well to emphasise its gravity in his statement in Bonn'' on Monday. His declaration that " every week and every month that ratifi- cation is put off strengthens the Kremlin's hope of a disruption of the west" is the kernel of the whole problem. It is pro- foundly true, and no one can doubt that the Kremlin has justification for its hope. If there is anything to France's interest it is that Dr. Adenauer should be kept in office, and that through the ratification of the E.D.C. treaty the forces of N.A.T.O. should be increased by the addition. of a powerful and efficient German contingent. Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden are right in saying that on the whole the danger of war is receding, but it is a mistake to say it too emphatically or too often. The fact is that Russia is inscrutable and unpredictable. It is easy to find arguments telling against belief in imminent war, but it is almost as easy to find arguments telling in favour of it. Russia may or may not be increasing her own armed forces. For that matter, she has little need to. But she is trebling the military strength of East Germany. Marshal Tito has just been appealing for help in the defence of his frontiers, beyond which satellite and Russian troops are massing ominously. Russia has as yet returned no answer to the Allied Note of last September on a Four-Power meeting on German and European settlement, and none is looked for to this week's renewed attempt to get the Soviet Government to discuss a peace treaty with the unhappy Austria. Add to this the steady progress in welding all the satellite States into a single whole under unchallenged and unquestioned Russian domination, and it will be seen what incredible levity it is to exchange blithe assurances that Russia never means to attack, and on the strength of that to abandon all concern for the organisation of that defence the absence of which forms a clamant invitation to Russia to take action. General Ridgway knows the deficiencies of the defensive forces he commands. The one glaring deficiency is the absence of any German contingent, and for that France is as responsible as Germany, or more so. M. Mayer spoke on Wednesday of submitting the E.D.C. treaty to the Assembly for ratification and setting the various Parliamentary committees to work on it. That will be no rapid process, and if a prior agreement on the Saar is to be insisted on the delay may be protracted.
Who is to bring Europe.to its senses ? Mr. Dean Acheson, still for four more days Secretary of State, appears to have called on Mr. Churchill for a firmer lead. He may be meditat- ing one on Jamaican beaches. But, while this country has no desire to repudiate its responsibilities, it is not to London that the world looks for a lead four days before the inauguration of a new American President, particularly a President of such prowess and potentialities as Dwight Eisenhower. Whatever the substance of his declaration, it will consist of no empty words. He has been thinking his problems out, particularly the problem of Korea, and indeed of all Asia, clarified by his brief visit to that battle-zone. He has talked them out with Mr. Churchill. His day is at hand, and all the world turns question- ing and hopeful eyes on him. If he has a lead to give no one in Europe will grudge either him or his country the credit for it
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