Moment of Candor

Halfway through the radio speech in which he explained his decision to run for the presidency, der Alte suddenly lashed out at Britain. "For some time," said Adenauer, "the atmosphere toward Germany in Britain has been, one might almost say, systematically impaired . . . British attacks against De Gaulle, arising from certain differences of opinion, are keeping, I believe, within moderate limits. Only against us Germans and especially against me are these attacks being made ever more strongly."

In London, Harold Macmillan hastily handed down an order forbidding British officials to reply to Adenauer. But the Tory Daily Telegraph, under no such restraint, counterattacked with an editorial called "Are We Beastly to the Germans?" Growled the Telegraph: "In suggesting the existence of an anti-German conspiracy, Dr. Adenauer was very wide of the mark. No conspiracy is needed, since anti-German feeling exists without being artificially inspired."

Fact is, as the Telegraph suggested, that the postwar alliance between Britain and West Germany has been at best "a shotgun marriage" imposed by the Soviet threat. Adenauer himself has never forgotten that British occupation authorities fired him as mayor of Cologne in 1945 for "insufficient display of energy." And when Harold Macmillan failed to consult him before setting off to Moscow last month, all Adenauer's suppressed distrust of Britain was reawakened. Bitterly, Adenauer concluded that Macmillan was preparing to offer Khrushchev de facto recognition of Communist East Germany, thereby selling out a vital West German diplomatic position without even asking how Bonn felt about it.

Thus aroused, Adenauer became abnormally sensitive to public hostility toward Germany in Britain--a feeling first revealed by the chilly reception that British crowds gave West German President Theodore Heuss during his state visit to England (TIME, Nov. 3). Unforgivingly, the Chancellor has kept track of anti-German blasts in Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express and the tasteless comments of Daily Mirror Correspondent Cassandra (William Neil Connor)--who last week compared Adenauer's attitude on Berlin negotiations to "the rigidity of Hitler at Munich."

The British have not been happy to see Germany replace them recently as Europe's No. 1 trading power. A spate of war movies, a new rash of generals' memoirs and war-adventure tales, the unearthing last week of a live German bomb beside the Thames near .Waterloo Station, all keep alive old memories. Some might acknowledge that the moment was not propitious for old grudges, but the Tory Telegraph, for one, was adamant: "Dr. Adenauer's verbal explosion, tactless as it may seem, has the virtue of forcing both countries to face unwelcome truths while there is still time to moderate the harm they can do."

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