Rearguard Action
THE stunned silence from Bonn should not lull anyone into supposing that Chancellor Adenauer has had his final word on the subject of his retirement or upon his successor.
It is now clear that the united front against him had not been apparent to the Chancellor from Italy, perhaps because he had been, on holiday, so occupied in talking to the mass press that he had no time to watch Bonn from afar; perhaps because his once true reporters inside the party were no longer reporting so faithfully what was going on. The television interview and the long conversation with an illustrated weekly had both been pointed, like the lethal weapons they were, at candidate- Chancellor Erhard. 'Den krieg ich noch auf N get his stock down to zero, yet. It was on every billboard, but the bitter crack, so like a thousand that had reduced Professor Erhard's stock and raised the Chancellor's, this time went sour on the readers—as it had already gone sour on the Christian Democrats and the Bavarian sister. The well-staged meetings went the way the majority wanted, and immediately the vote had been taken on the second day, the President was informed of the decision so that it was official and public. The tactical manoeuvre had turned suddenly into a major defeat. Economics and popularity had won the day. But the defeat leaves questions behind it.
Will the victor defend himself now, as he has never done in the past against the snide attacks of the old, old man, so great in some ways and so unbelievably small-minded in others? The party will back him, because of the elec- tion, but he must, without attacking the founder of the party and almost the founder of the Federal Republic, take the lead.
Only slightly behind the scene, the restless, discredited, but able and dynamic figure of Franz Josef Strauss, stands waiting. He backed the election of Erhard as Chancellor-designate. But he must have asked a price . . . ? And Willy Brandt, representative of Berlin, which holds Germany's conscience, and representative of 40 per cent of Federal voters (Berliners do not vote in Federal elections), has had a success in France that surprised him. For though his views on talking to the Russians about Berlin do not suit de Gaulle, he is not opposed to a certain amount of planning in economics, and this is certainly music to French ears that do not care for Erhard's expansionism and Anglo- philia. This is the real question . . . can Erhard still rescue the next election for the conservatives, the free-traders? Or must Kennedy and de Gaulle begin the competition again, for the favours of a new, unknown, and possibly Socialist Chancellor?
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