The Decisive Advance

The West German Bundestag last week voted 314 to 157 for German rearmament within the Atlantic Alliance. It was not the last word, for the French and German Upper Houses have still to be heard from, but it was the decisive advance toward the long-debated, often-despaired-of goal of lining up the West Germans with the West. Both sides in the cold war had labeled the German vote a point of no return, and the Communists threatened retribution should the decision go against them. But in a speech fortnight ago, Foreign Minister Molotov prepared himself a retreat by distinguishing between the "ratification" and the "implementation" of German rearmament. Molotov apparently anticipated that the Paris accords could not be prevented from becoming law, had swallowed his defeat and had begun to prepare for the next effort to delay and demoralize.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer has maintained all along that the rearmament vote need not prevent--in fact might even encourage--Russian attempts to negotiate with the West. Strength, he argued, is what the Russians respect. Last week everything pointed to Adenauer's essential rightness. At 79, and still carrying a burden that might cripple a man half his age, the indomitable old Chancellor had made his mark on history. Almost singlehanded, in the face of ruthlessly hard and skillfully soft Soviet pressure, in the face of French letdowns and Socialist opposition at home, he delivered to the West the long-sought covenant of German alliance.

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