A Step Forward

From Paris, Frankfurt, Bonn and Berlin, Secretary of State Dean Acheson returned last week to Washington, tired but cheerful. In the group which gathered at the airport to meet him were Mrs. Acheson and Harry Truman. Said the beaming President to the Secretary: "You have done an excellent job." Then Acheson kissed his wife and drove off to report to the President in detail on the conference of U.S., British and French Foreign Ministers in Paris (TIME, Nov. 21).

At the close of the conference, Acheson had said that the Paris decisions would become known in the following "weeks, or even months." In fact, the substance of the Paris agreement on Germany was known last week. Thanks largely to France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman who had set what he considered a sound policy above French fears of Germany, the agreement represented a sizable boost for the young West German Republic:

P: The Allied High Commissioners were authorized to suspend dismantling of "surplus" plants in West Germany (see below).

P: West Germany would be permitted to send consuls and commercial attaches abroad, and to open a bureau in Bonn to direct them. This bureau would be the first embryonic foreign ministry of the Bonn government.

P: Germany would be permitted to enter certain international organizations, e.g.. the Council of Europe. (The Saar would be admitted to the council separately, on an equal basis with Germany.)

P: Germany would be permitted to build bigger and faster ocean-going cargo ships as a start toward restoring her merchant marine.

P: The formal state of war which still exists between the Western nations and Germany would be softened by juggling some technicalities, but not altogether suspended (the U.S. wants to retain a legal basis for keeping a U.S. force in Western Germany).

In exchange for these concessions the Germans would have to promise to: 1) take their assigned seats on the Ruhr Authority set up by the Western powers last April, and thereby formally accept international control of the Ruhr's industrial output; 2) make some public statement indicating acceptance of continuing military security inspection by the Western powers; 3) cooperate in reforming the hidebound German civil service and decartelizing German industry.

When Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer announced the gist of the agreement to the Bundestag at Bonn, the news was greeted by cries of "Bravo!" and "Sehr gut!" The Western powers had actually conceded more than Adenauer and his government had expected to get. Last week the Chancellor and the Western High Commissioners began negotiations to put the Paris agreement to work. (The Germans loved the word "negotiations"--it gave them a standing as a semi-sovereign nation which they had not known since the war.) Vast difficulties still remained, including the possibility that in this week's foreign-policy debate the French Assembly might try to whittle down the Paris decisions. But, as Konrad Adenauer put it, "The German Federal Republic has this day taken a great step forward."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.