EUROPE: France & Germany: Two in Tandem

West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt stood beneath the federal eagle in Bonn's Bundestag one day recently and vigorously defended his relationship with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing against an attack by an opposition Deputy. "It's true that we have friendly relations," boomed Schmidt, "but it would be a great mistake to interpret this, as the French press has done, as if it were a tandem. A tandem, the way I understand it, is a bicycle on which two pedal but only one steers."

Maybe so, but to a good many Europeans these days...

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