A thousand officials from outside went in to mount watch at polling places. Red-and-white border barricades dropped down to keep out everybody else. Then some 650,000 citizens of the industrial Saar basin freely cast their votes. The question: Would they accept the "Europeanizing" of their territory, and thereby advance the cause of European unity and Franco-German amity?
The polls had barely closed this week when the answer began to appear: a loud and disturbing nein. By a margin of more than two to one, Saarlanders, German-speaking and German-oriented, had rejected a plan giving them political autonomy under the new Western European...
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