Foreign News: Area of Maneuver

For nearly two weeks—until the National Assembly dispersed for vacation—France's canny Foreign Minister Georges Bidault kept a document locked up in his desk. Then, one day last week, he took out the paper, got Premier Laniel to summon the Cabinet to consider it. It contained Britain's terms for "associating" with the proposed European Defense Community, an association which Paris demanded as one of three major preconditions to France's final decisions on EDC.

The ministers assembled with grumbles, angry about the short notice and the little time to study the terms. Bidault briskly got down...