Shortly after 3 one morning last week, nearly 500 weary members of West Germany's Bundestag straggled red-eyed out of Bonn's slick, brass-trimmed Parliament house into the bright dawn. Behind them lay 16 hours of acrimonious debate which had ended in a half-step forward for West Germany's rearmament program: the passage, by a vote of 270-166, of military conscription.
The Socialist Party, West Germany's second largest, had fought a bitter delaying action. During the second reading, all 145 Socialist Deputies walked out of the Bundestag in protest against the speed with which Chancellor Adenauer's government coalition was pushing the bill through....
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