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The President's letter was primarily intended to boom Adenauer's chances in the West German election by associating the West (and therefore Adenauer) with the vote-compelling issue of German unity. It also confirmed what the Washington conference of Big Three Foreign Ministers had previously implied: that U.S. policy is groping towards a new order of priorities in Europe. Instead of telling the West Germans: "First join EDC, then worry about reunification afterwards," the U.S. is now inclined to give EDC and reunification equal priority, letting events prove which one has the better chance of being achieved. The change is one of emphasis more than of direction: Washington has simply recognized that 1) revolt in East Germany has given reunification a political appeal; 2) German unity is probably inevitable in the long run anyway, and therefore should be supported.
The Third stumbling block is the French Assembly. Many of its members fear German arms more than they do the Russians. Divided and politically stagnant, Frenchmen are appalled at the "miracle of West German recovery," which has already outstripped French industry. They greet the prospect of German soldiers, even in European Army suits, with cries of "German militarism."
French fears are not groundless, even if exaggerated. A united Reich, 68 million strong, would quickly dominate Western and Central Europe. It might use its weight to play off the West against the East; it could conceivably pull a second Rapallo in exchange for Soviet concessions at the expense of satellite Poland. (Russia and Poland occupy 44,500 square miles of former German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers.) Or, if it did not make a deal with Russia, a united Germany might do the opposite: plunge Europe into a war for its lost provinces.
France Must Ratify. French reactions to the reviving German problem are a mixture of fear and wishful thinking. Gaullists, while saying that they recognize the need for German arms, seriously propose that Germany should be forbidden by treaty to grow stronger than France. Communists, and many Socialists, point to Soviet peace gestures, hoping, in an undefined way, for a Franco-Soviet arrangement to keep Germany "neutralized."
The fact is that EDC is the best political bargain France can hope to make over German rearmament. A European Army offers controlled German arms, watched over by the U.S. and Britain. It is possible only because Konrad Adenauer also fears a revival of the German "military monster" and what it might do to democracy's precarious hold on the German people. Yet still the French stall.
Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein recently put into words some of the exasperation that French stalling provokes. "EDC," said Monty, "has got to be started. Get the damn thing launched and push it, you chaps, push it along . . . The French must ratify it. They must! They produced this thing, and they must jolly well ratify it . . ."
Alternatives. The U.S. State Department is convinced that EDC could be ratified (by a narrow five-vote margin) if the French cabinet would really put the heat on the Assembly. But no French government has so far shown the political courage to force the issue.