A change of heart?
BRITAIN & EUROPE
MARC ULLMANN Paris—General de Gaulle never revises his script, he only revises his actions. This was the lesson of his policies towards Algeria. His whole art lies in the ability to change policy while keeping up appearances. Indeed he changes direction with such majesty that it takes the ordinary mortal many months to wake up to the fact that he has done so.
Last week's Franco-German encounter fol- lowed the familiar pattern. Chancellor Kiesin- ger, we were supposed to understand, had simply fallen victim to our hero's formidable charm. As for the General, he had not moved an inch.
I believe this to be totally fallacious. For the essential point is that for the first time de Gaulle has broken his own golden rule: to leave the British to advance proposals, and then to shoot them down. Thus in 1958 the British suggested a European Free Trade Area, and the French government told them to join the Common Market. In 1962 they took this advice—only to be told they should be satisfied with association. Each time the General returned the ball to the British court. This time it is different. The French and German leaders have agreed that the Community should put a proposition to the British.
Right up to the last moment it looked as though nothing had changed. If one inquired at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs one was told that no conceivable purpose could be served by discussing what de Gaulle had meant when he talked, back in November, of the possibility of 'trading arrangements' for Britain: for had not Mr Wilson ruled such possibilities out in advance?
The change seems to have started with the notorious Brandt speech at Ravensburg, in which he was supposed to have accused the French President of being 'obsessed with power.' Paris suddenly became aware of the extent of anti-Gaullist sentiments on the other side of the Rhine. It was a shock to see that references to an 'unreasonable government' were automatically assumed by a German audience to apply to that of France—and were cheered to the echo accordingly. It was an even worse shock to discover that the General's out- raged reaction had precisely the opposite effect to that intended.
The German press with a single voice re- volted against behaviour which 'even an eighteenth century despot would not have ex- hibited without the risk of grave diplomatic complications.' Herr Brandt, before the Bun- destag, found himself having to defend not his strictures on the French President, but the apologies he was suspected of having made for them. The only cheer he got was for the assur- ance that he had `no intention of going to Paris in a penitent's shirt.'
Two days before the German Chancellor's arrival in Paris the General drew the con- clusions of this daficle. He agreed that when the Anglo-continental issue was discussed Herr Brandt should join Dr Kiesinger. By so doing he was tacitly admitting that he would have to drop his attempt to play off the Christian Democrats against the Socialist SPD —and that, for the first time for years, he was ready to talk turkey. That is precisely what he did : and, typically, having decided to do it, he did it in style.
The background chosen, oddly enough, was Vietnam. De Gaulle believes the situation there to be grave. The bombardment of the city of Bud by the us marines and air force has destroyed any remaining support for the American war effort among the mass of the South Vietnamese. The way in which Mr Rusk did not even bother to await the return to New York of U Thant before announcing the re- sumption of the bombing of Hanoi is inter- preted as convincing evidence that the war is going to get tougher. In such conditions, accord- ing to the General, it is incumbent on the French and the Germans to get together, and a silly little quarrel over the British must not be allowed to get in the way.
`Well and good' said Dr Kiesinger, in effect. But avoiding division over a 'silly little quarrel' must involve positive action. If he were to re- turn to Bonn empty-handed, he would be frog- marched straight into the Italo-Benelux second front against France. The General took the point. He even agreed to stretch his vocabulary. Never before had he been prepared to say more than that he had 'no objection in principle' to British membership of the European Com- munity. This time he actually brought himself to say that he 'welcomed' the idea—just as long as nobody tried to put a date on it.
That would not have amounted to much if it had been all. But it was not all. He also agreed that Germany, 'which is less suspect than France,' could, at her leisure, put forward her ideas, and these could form the basis for a proposition from all the Six; and then, finally, he agreed to spell out, for the first time, what he meant by an acceptable 'arrangement' The German visitors were told that an `arrangement' could apply to the whole range of industrial trade, subject to agreement on a corresponding increase in agricultural trans- actions at agreed prices and in agreed quantities. Given the rules of the Garr, this meant that the French government accepted the concept of a free trade area embracing the Six and the candidate countries.
Chancellor Kiesinger was overjoyed. The German industrial backers of his party have never asked for more than this. They don't care about politics: they are simply interested in not being cut off from their markets. Herr Brandt was less enraptured. Still, for him, too, it was at least 'a start'—always providing that it was accompanied by the magic change in the General's vocabulary. Both the German leaders could not but be conscious of the fact that their host had made the one concession his own in- dustry fears most—namely the opening of the French market to British competition. In re- turn all they had agreed to was that Mr Wilson would have to wait for his invitation to join the Council of Ministers.
From now on the British government will have to be exceptionally maladroit for the General to recover the territory he has surren- dered. Of course, if Mr Wilson is going to say in advance that anything short of full member- ship is out, then the General will be in the clear once more. He would no longer have to choose between proposals to the British and a united front of the Five against himself.
For Dr Kiesinger made it clear in Paris that if the British held out for 'all or nothing' they would have to do so without the help of Ger- many. 'A bad arrangement,' he commented, 'is worth more than a good court case.' And for the connoisseurs of his mots he repeated• one he had already used in Rome. 'To those who talk about breaking up the Common Market and replacing France with Britain I would say that that's like the heart transplant operation: the operation succeeds, but the patient dies.'
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