(See Cover)
Three cars, one bearing the black, red and gold pennant of the West German Federal Republic, wound upwards through the vineyards on the east bank of the Rhine. The first car was a Porsche, weighed down by two policemen; the second, a huge Mercedes with two blue spotlights blinking. A smaller Mercedes brought up the rear, and in it, four policemen sat within gripping distance of four submachine guns.
The three cars came to a halt in the village of Rhöndorf, across the Rhine from Bonn. While they waited, a tall old man, whose face is a graven image, strode down the 53 steps leading from his villa to the street. The policemen's iron heels clicked in unison and the old man, with no smile, lowered himself into the cushions of the big Mercedes. The convoy moved off, purring through vineyards and pine woods until it came to the Autobahn and merged with the traffic flowing towards the Ruhr.
"How fast are we going, please?" said the old man, leaning forward.
"One hundred twenty kilometers, Herr Bundeskanzler."
"Go a little faster," commanded Konrad Adenauer, and the needle leaped up to a steady 130 (81 m.p.h.). 15 Million Posters. Almost every day for the past month, the Federal Chancellor of Germany has been urging his driver on. It is election time in Germany, and before the votes are counted on Sept. 6 he hopes to drive 6,000 miles to deliver 45 major speeches. Hundreds of other candidates are also stumping the land.
With less than two weeks to go, 65 different parties are promising the voters everything from a Hohenzollern restoration to a holy war against Russia. Fifteen million posters and 60 million leaflets extol the panaceas of Nazis and Nihilists, Regionalists and Royalists, Capitalists and Socialists. Catholics and Communists. It did not help at all that two groups, with separate slates, presented themselves to the voters as one and the same party: the German Reich Party.
In a nation where democracy has yet to sink its roots deep. 33 million Germans are eligible to vote, and probably 80% of them will. They will elect 484 deputies to the Bundestag, but to most of them the issue is simpler than that. The issue is Ja or Nein for the man whom Winston Churchill has called the greatest German statesman since Bismarck: Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer himself believes that the "fate of Europe, the fate of Germany, the fate of our Christian civilization depends on the outcome of September 6." There is much in what he says.
Defeat for Adenauer would be regarded in Moscow as a major tactical gain. In Germany, it might easily lead to the kind of governmental chaos that emasculated the Weimar Republic in the '20s.
Victory for Adenauer would be great news for the West. It would: 1) confirm Germany's decision to rearm on the side of the West; 2) strengthen Germany's slow experiment in democracy by continuing strong, also stable government. It would bolster the faltering cause of European Union, in which Konrad Adenauer devoutedly believes.
Herr Professor. Adenauer has governed West Germany since 1949. Many Germans regard him as the father in Vaterland. He seems to tower above them like some eternal Herr Professor, not to be argued with, only to be obeyed.