Victors & Vanquished

In Japan last week, for the first time since the U.S. occupation, Japanese openly talked rearmament. In Western Germany, plain Germans talked rearmament too, but there the topic was no longer new. In Western Germany the question was not if, but when and how.

Communist aggression in Korea had lined up the Japanese more solidly with the West than ever before. The Japanese had found something new and vitally important to talk about, and the talk was going to get louder & louder.

In Paris, the French Foreign Office was preparing some news for Western Germany. Last winter the French had stonily ignored German pleas to stop the dismantling of German blast furnaces and steel mills. Last week, the French indicated that the Germans soon might be asked to make steel for the defense of Western Europe, implied that German steel production would be raised from an annual 11.5 million tons to 14.5 million.

The influential German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung observed: "We have learned at Seoul and Taejon that there are too few tanks and guns, and the steel for them is now to be supplied by the Germans . . . People beyond our borders are more and more coming to understand how little the Western world can afford the division into victors and vanquished."

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