No Time for Delusion

In a room banked with tulips and azaleas at The Hague last week, the defense chiefs of the Western nations threw self-congratulatory verbal bouquets at one another. The meeting of eleven Atlantic pact nations was a competition in complacency. But in sober fact, there was nothing to be complacent about. In men, material and morale, Western Europe's guard was still down. It was all but helpless to meet a Soviet attack.

The main U.S. effort at The Hague seemed directed toward assuring its allies that, if war came, U.S. help would be prompt and effective. The Europeans were eager--too eager--to believe this. Their defense plans had been conceived when the U.S. had a monopoly of the atomic bomb; the bomb had been the overriding factor in holding the Russians back from attack. That period was over. The Russian A-bomb had sharply cut down the Western advantage, restored a more "normal" situation, in which the Russians were militarily freer to move forward, unless they could be restrained by forces on the spot.

A Bluff. Yet the pace of Western Europe's defense had not been spurred forward by the urgency of the new threat. The Western world was running a bluff. To expose the bluff in print would not help the Russians, whose habit of mind allowed them to believe only such information as they stole by spying. The danger was that the West would be deluded and trapped by its own bluff unless its people were told what stood between them and the Soviet air force (largest in the world), the rapidly expanding Soviet navy, and a Red army that could, inside two months, start at least 100 divisions rolling across Europe.

To meet this massive Soviet threat, the West could not put more than 15 divisions in the field if Russia attacked next month. This is the West's present military strength in Europe:

P:U.S. troops in Germany "total about 85,000; about two divisions are combat troops. Only one U.S. bomber group and two fighter groups are in Europe. P: Britain's ground forces now total 367,000, but 117,000 of these troops are National Service men, drafted for only 18 months. Three of Britain's five divisions are in Hong Kong, Malaya and North Africa. In Germany it has only one infantry division and one armored division. There are only a few combat troops in the United Kingdom. The Royal Air Force could not muster more than 20 squadrons each of bombers and fighters.P: France, on paper, has 400,000 men under arms. But at least 100,000 of them are merely auxiliary police or local overseas security units. Nearly half of France's regular army of 300,000, including 90% of its professional officers, is pinned down in Indo-China. In France, North Africa and Western Germany, there are only three French divisions remotely ready for action. The French air force is negligible. P: The Benelux nations have a total active ground force strength of about 100,000. Belgium has only one active division. The Netherlands' total ground force strength, including the Indonesian expeditionary force: 114,000.

P: The present strength of the other Atlantic pact nations is not a factor.

By 1952, on the present timetable, the Western European nations might double their air forces and increase the number of ready divisions from 15 to 20.

Frivolity. Yet the inadequacy of weapons and trained men is not the worst part of the European defense picture. There are two worse flaws which can be summed up in the names of two countries:1) Germany, 2) France.

Last week the Council of Europe, meeting at Strasbourg, was dandling the German problem on its knee. How far should the Council go in letting Germany back among the European nations? Should Germany be invited to send an observer-minister? The French objected. Or would the Germans accept the role of mere observers?

This frivolous dalliance with time was not confined to Strasbourg. Paris, London and Washington were all acting as if they had an indefinite period in which to make up their minds about Germany. Nobody faced this fact: if the Red army moved 200 miles from the Western end of Russia's zone of Germany to the French border, the Kremlin would have doubled its present industrial potential for supporting war. If, in terms of high-school algebra, it now takes x Western force to restrain Russia, it will take 2X Western force when the Russians have reached the Rhine.

Understandably, the French fear a rearmed Germany. But no French politician in power has the nerve to tell the French people what their real choices are: 1) let the Germans arm themselves for defense against the Russians; 2) let the Germans sit home while Frenchmen and their allies cross Western Germany and defend it from the Russians; or, 3) let the Russians take West Germany and add its strength to their own.

Out of this grim list, even the French would pick alternative No. 1, if they were forced to face the realistic choice. It would then be possible to settle down to the highly necessary discussion of how to control a rearmed Germany. But until that point was reached, all maneuvers for the curbing of Germany--and all plans for the defense of Western Europe--were just committee-room talk.

Last week Winston Churchill rose in the House of Commons and dealt with the German problem in his greatest speech since the war. Said Churchill: "There can be no hope for a united Europe without Germany, and there is no hope for Germany except within a free and united Europe . . . France and Britain . . . have the superior power to raise

Germany ... to an equal rank and to lasting association with them.

"Then these three countries, helping each other, conscious of their future united greatness, forgetting ancient feuds and the horrible deeds and tragedies of the past, can make the core or the nucleus upon which all the other civilized democracies of Europe, bond or free, can one day rally and combine ... I see no reason why British, American, French and German soldiers should not stand in line together on honorable terms of comradeship . . . The grand design of Charlemagne must be re-adapted to modern conditions."

Churchill begged Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin to press for a Germany able to defend itself. But Bevin replied that he could not urge such a policy on his French allies. Bevin, sick and cautious, left for Strasbourg in no mood for grand designs.

The Kremlin was scarcely concealing its designs on Germany. U.S. High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy recently told a U.S. congressional committee that he expected the Reds to force a "real crisis" in Germany this spring. The Communists had blared out their plans for a German youth march on Western Berlin on Whitsunday, May 28. By dint of intensive preparations the Western allies now considered themselves ready to meet the Communist boys & girls. But nobody in Germany had any serious plans for coping with the Red army.

Weak at the Top. The second great problem was France. Obviously, the on-the-spot defense of Western Europe was unthinkable without France. All turned on this nation, which has shown that it could rise to heights of courage, and could also sink to depths of submission. Which of these two Frances was the free world depending on in 1950? In short, would the French fight? People who know France give a reluctant answer: France would not fight well.

There is still great moral strength in the French people. Observers who know present-day French youth are favorably impressed by its vigor. There is great patriotism, even among the French workers who call themselves Communists. Most of them are Communists for revenue only: they strike for wages, but they will not strike for Communist political objectives. Although the French dockworkers' union is supposed to be 100% Communist-dominated, the Reds are failing in their present all-out drive to have the dockers refuse to unload ships with U.S.military aid.

The flaw in France lies at the top--in a weak, vacillating, procrastinating coalition government of parties that have little in common besides the desire to stay in power. These parties pursue their petty intrigues while the security of France runs out. One party gets the War Ministry and puts in its generals; another party takes over the ministry and sidetracks the first party's generals to make room for its own. Result: the generals are playing politics and the army is demoralized. Although the basic economy of the country has made a fine recovery, French government finances are muddled. Ossified bureaucracy stifles the national life; civil servants and other pressure groups control the national budget.

Above all, the French government fails --through a mixture of cowardice and stupidity--to tell the French people the facts of international life. What the French people will respond to is a clear statement of a case. That is what they are not getting --and probably will never get from the men who are now running France.

In a Few Months. The defense of Europe from Russia requires all three of the following: 1) a Germany that can defend itself; 2) a France that will defend itself; 3) an integrated fast-moving arms program backed by the U.S.

As of April 1950 it has none of the three--and is not moving toward any of them.

There are some men in Europe--besides Churchill--who understand the situation. One of them is French General Pierre Billotte, who recently resigned his job as French military representative to the United Nations and his commission in the French army. Billotte quit so as to draw attention to the desperate state of Western Europe's defense. Writing this week in the Revue de Paris, Billotte stated his case: "The war power of the U.S.S.R. is considerable. But it is only terrifying in contrast with the military weakness of the Western peoples. It is important not to be intimidated or inhibited about this. No future historian could ever manage to explain how 275 million Western Europeans, allied to 160 million Americans and Canadians, with their industrial and agricultural potential fully developed, could allow themselves to be crushed, dominated, dispersed or destroyed by Russia as she is now, with her potential only just born . . .

"In a few months, in two years perhaps, Soviet Russia will possess all the sinews of war which will allow her--if we continue to do nothing--to carry through the various strategic actions in Europe which will allow her to face the final conflict with the American continent."

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