Design of Providence?

This week, on the banks of the River Meuse, France's ex-President Charles de Gaulle broke a long silence. He called for a Western European bloc, built around a Franco-British alliance, to stand as arbiter between the two giants of the East and West. De Gaulle quoted a prophetic countryman, Historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote 111 years ago:

"Two great peoples, starting at different points, go forward toward the same end; these are the Russians and the Americans. The others seem to have attained the limits that nature traced for them; these two alone go forward in a race of which the eye cannot see the limits.

"To attain his end, the American relies on the strength of reason of individuals: Russia concentrates in one man all the power of society. The one has for his principal means of action, Liberty, the other, Servitude. Their points of departure are different; their paths are diverse. But each of them seems called by a secret design of Providence to hold one day in his hands the destinies of half the world."

Asked De Gaulle: "Who then can reestablish the equilibrium, if not the Old World, between the two new ones? Old Europe, which during so many centuries was the guide of the universe, is in a position to constitute, in the heart of a world that tends to divide itself into two, the necessary element of compensation and understanding. . . ."

De Gaulle feared that one side or the other of the divided world would try to utilize reborn Germany against the other. "[Germany] must be so placed that she may not become either tempter or tempted. If not, woe once more to the sons and daughters of men!"

The day after De Gaulle spoke, the "world that tends to divide itself" quietly and symbolically cracked in two. Britain accepted the U.S. offer to combine economic administration of the U.S. and British zones of Germany, and France will likely join them soon. Russia, largely responsible for the split occupation of Germany, will probably keep her own zone isolated. Then two Germanics, two Europes, two worlds, will face each other across a widening breach.

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