(2 of 5)
FRANCE, where EDC was born, is now trying hard to disown it. The French cabinet demands an impossible price for ratification of EDC: that the Franco-German dispute over the Saar be settled in favor of France; that the U.S. bail France out of Indo-China; that Britain throw in with EDC as a counterbalance to the Germans; that "the integrity of the French Army" (but not of anybody else's) be written into EDC by means of nine protocols. A German diplomat, reflecting his booming country's self-confidence, scoffed: "Father Pleven expected a girl. It turned out to be a boy."
Twin Pillars. EDC is designed to dovetail the armies of Western Europe so that none can be easily withdrawn for aggressive adventures of its own. This is a more complicated ambition than simple rearmament; the result is a complicated blueprint. At the top, EDC will have 1) a Council of Ministers, 2) an 87-man Assembly, 3) a nine-man Commissariat, serving as a six-nation general staff. Together, EDC and the Schuman Coal-Steel Plan will form the military and economic pillars of a still more visionary federation: the U.S. of Europe.
To allay French fears that German recruits might coalesce into a new, nationalistic Wehrmacht, EDC will integrate its units at the division level. There will be no German General Staff; goose-stepping is verboten. The main contributions to the proposed 43-division force:
France: 14 divisions, 750 planes.
Germany: 12 divisions.*
Italy: 12 divisions, 450 planes.
Benelux: 5 divisions, 600 planes.
By signing the 131-article treaty, all six EDC members promise to regard an attack on one as an attack upon all. And all 14 members of NATO, including the U.S., are treaty-bound to come to the aid of any part of EDC attacked by an aggressor. The U.S. and Britain, who would not belong to EDC, separately guarantee to treat a "threat to the integrity or unity of EDC" as a "threat to their own security." A German attempt to bolt EDC would presumably constitute such a threat.
Ancient Dream. The urge—and need—to add German divisions to NATO is the No. 1 reason for EDC. Reason No. 2 is a long-term political objective: European Union. By intermingling the armies of France and Germany, Pan-Europeans like Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi and France's Jean Monnet confidently hoped to staunch the national rivalries that have convulsed their Continent for centuries.
This mixture of distant idealism and a more practical military expedience has won EDC the kind of high-minded support that simple, naked German rearmament could not hope for. "Some seem to think that EDC has no purpose except to meet the threat from the Soviet Union," said John Foster Dulles recently. "That is not the true case at all." European unity, said Dulles, is "necessary in itself."
Adenauer has even suggested that EDC, a "purely defensive alliance," should give the Soviet Union a guarantee against attack, in return for a similar—and enforceable—undertaking from the Communists.