THAW ON THE RHINE
By Our German Correspondent. Bonn WE live in an age when a rearguard action which avoids the worst of an impending catastrophe can be presented to the public as a signal victory. Aided by some fast talking from his expensive propaganda apparatus. Dr. Adenauer is endeavouring to create the impression at home and abroad that he has scored a triumph for Europe and the West over Dr. Dehler, the Free Democratic Leader, in the last fortnight of political exchanges in Diisseldorf and Bonn. In fact he rescued only sixteen of the fifty-three Free Democratic deputies who originally owed allegiance to Dr. Dehler, and some of these are now wavering. The sixteen were dragged on board by the scruff of their necks and the subsequent muster showed that all their tanks, guns and base equipment had been left behind. Dr. Adenauer's Dunkirk is hard to disguise.
The political constellation which has ruled the Federal Republic with such blessed success since 1949 is being extinguished by. degrees. The Refugee Party faded out over the Saar issue last year and Dr. Adenauer saved the two Ministers and a small handful, but lost the party machine. He saved four Ministers and a slightly larger handful from the Free Democrats, but they also have been disowned and have no political importance from now on. Dr. Adenauer's coalition strength has diminished from 333 to 281 in the past two and a half years, leaving him with a majority of only seventy-four in the Bundestag. The Christian Democrats are feeling their growing isolation.
There is a great thaw in the air. The Bavarians inhaled it last year when they installed an anti-clerical government in Catholic Bavaria in opposition to Dr. Adenauer's allies. North Rhine-Westphalia followed suit last week, Baden-Wurttem- berg, Hamburg, and Lower Saxony may jump on the band waggon as time goes by.
The isolation of the Christian Democratic Union is the fruit, firstly, of seven years of government—government which by any standards has been successful, by German standards brilliantly successful, but in spite of all is still subject to the natural process of attrition; secondly, of the party's failure to associate its allies in any of the principal political decisions; thirdly, of the party's insistence on conformism which was described in this column last week. There is nothing tragic about the nation's desire for a change.
Dr. Adenauer and his supporters in the West do no good. therefore, in pretending that the opposition has the mark of the beast. Sooner or later the beast will he wearing the harness and its temper will only be more testy if it is flicked with a switch now.
There is little evidence for the charges that Dr. Dehler is unreliable because he is bent on a solo canter to Moscow. Dr. Adenauer needed to take that route too. The complaints of the British and American press that his Free Democratic Party is stocked with young ex-Nazis look equally peevish, if it is remembered that Dr. Adenauer has just as liberally stocked the Federal ministries with old ones. Nothing could be more damaging in the long term to the cause of the West now than to treat Dr. Dehler and Herr 011enhauer as pariahs. Dr. Jaeger, the Christian Social chairman of the Bundestag Defence Committee, has understood this and put it into practical effect. By treating the Social Democratic opposition, as a responsible force in. the State he has secured its consent t° constitutional amendments so as to enable the military 8ills to go through parliament. Several other Christian Democrats—men like Herr von Rrentano, Herr Kiesinger and Herr Arnold—would like t° see more co-operation with the Social Democrats. This may be the Christian Democratic Union's only way of salvation.
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