Time Out for Caterwauling

French and Germans were hissing and snarling at each other over the Saar region again.

In a fortnight of caterwauling nationalism, the German press screamed that the French were plotting economic annexation of the Saar. Bonn's Minister of Justice Thomas Dehler scoffed at French fears. German aggression, he said, was a "fairy tale"; German responsibility for the first World War had been no greater than France's. "Hitler," he shouted, "was a product of the Versailles treaty and of France's own despondency." To emphasize the Saar issue, the Bonn government called off a trade parley with the Quai d'Orsay.

The French came back stridently. Their High Commissioner for Germany, Andre Franc,ois-Poncet, demanded a retraction of Dehler's tirade. In Paris, a national assemblyman howled: "There is no difference between the Bonn government and the Nazis. German methods and mentality are always the same."

Bonn's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer finally apologized to Paris for Dehler's sound-off and minimized the whole incident. The Frankfurter Allgemelne soberly observed: "With what satisfaction the mighty boss in the Kremlin must have observed the goings-on."

This week, as the caterwauling subsided, French and Germans resumed trade talks in Paris and signed a $300 million agreement for the next six months.

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