THE ADMIRAL RADFORD STORY
By Our German Correspondent BOO A DMIRAL RADFORD may yet make a lasting name for him'A self in his own country, but if he fails he can be sure of a small but significant place in German history. At the moment, the Admiral is being cast here as the Wicked Fairy at the christening of the Christian Democrat Party's election campaign. Three months after it was first aired, his plan for the reduction of the American armed forces has the power to make and blight policies in Bonn. It is hard not to side with the cynics who point out that Dr. Adenauer has taken offence with what looks suspiciously like eagerness. At the time, the blow was certainly a severe One. There is no reason to doubt that Dr. Adenauer's immediate reaction was other than it seemed—extreme morti- fication mixed with anger. The Chancellor had just returned from Washington, where he was given no warning of the Radford proposals. In forcing an unpopular conscription Bill through parliament he had repulsed the Radford arguments when they were pressed on him by the Opposition. Repeatedly the government reiterated what had seemed a prime com- mandment of Western defence : modern weapons do not mean fewer men. After all this, to find that the forces of irresponsi- bility had guessed more of the real American attitude than the confidant of the State Department! The exasperated Chancellor blamed everything on the presidential elections— and he still speaks of this upheaval in American politics as if it were a stroke which had suddenly deprived a trusted friend of his sanity. But at this point the vehemence of Dr. Adenauer's resent- ment leaves room to doubt whether in fact .he has been knifed in the back or has backed on to a knife. To have been let down by an ally is a much lesser humiliatibn than to have been forced by circumstances' to admit one was wrong. The eighty-year-old Chancellor's popularity is waning, and he is not well placed for next year's election. But in the last two weeks he has done much to improve his 'prospects : he has virtually thrown his whole rearmament policy overboard and fitted himself out with a new one on popular vote-catching lines—and he has been able to do this, with apparent reluc- tance, at Admiral Radford's expense. In fact, the whole Radford Plan' imbroglio belongs to the best tradition of electoral comedy : one government is so shocked by the Infidelities of another during election time that it faints into the arms of its own voters.
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