Difficulties & Impossibilities

"When your self-preservation demands the accomplishment of a job," said General Dwight Eisenhower last week to the twelve North Atlantic allies in Rome, "there is nothing that is impossible. The impossible merely becomes a difficulty, something to be solved, something to be done."

The difficulty he was talking about is the creation of a European defense army, including twelve German divisions. Without the Germans, he said, "we can, in Western Europe, erect a defense that can, at least, although expensively and uneasily, produce a stalemate. But that is not enough."

To be really safe and strong, Eisenhower insisted, "we need German assistance, both in geography and military strength."

After hearing him out, diplomats of the twelve nations voted unanimously for the European army. But the parliaments and the peoples of the twelve nations must still be sold. Even as they voted, the NATO leaders were not at all sure they were confronted by merely a difficulty.

Old Mistrust. The Belgians and the Dutch, enthusiastic at first, were now dragging their feet, reminded of old fears of German power, old mistrust of French leadership.

In West Germany, Socialist Kurt Schumacher, who is probably more powerful now than Christian Democrat Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, fought the European army.

Britain last week took the opportunity to declare itself opposed, more firmly than ever, to including its troops in the European army. (Like the U.S., Britain is willing to furnish troops to serve alongside the continentals.) Winston Churchill's stand was a reversal of the position he took as a private citizen a year ago, but no real surprise to the continental nations. They nonetheless used it as a fresh pretense for dallying.

The real trouble was the French. It was they who devised the European army plan in the first place, knowing that they could not defend themselves without German help but unwilling to see Germany powerful again. Reluctantly at first, the U.S. had accepted Premier Rene Pleven's compromise: a European army to include twelve German army divisions, but barring a German general staff, limiting the divisions' size and armament, sprinkling them through the joint army to prevent them from homogenizing into a unified German army. To this international army France would contribute 14 divisions.

Two Extremes. Now that the other NATO nations had bought the Pleven plan, Pleven's precarious government was acting as if it did not dare submit it to its own National Assembly. The two extremes of French politics, the Communists and the Gaullists, are whipping up opposition to the plan. Cried General Charles de Gaulle last week: "For centuries, our worth and weight has been identical with that of the French Army. We cannot, we must not lose our army."

The best French guarantee of protection against a rising Germany, and against a menacing Russia, is a strong French Army, doing its share in the common defense. Until her allies could so convince France, or the French could so persuade themselves, the merely difficult threatened to become the impossible.

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