EUROPE ADRIFT

...Is it any wonder that even the official French attitude towards today's Britain, because of Labor's affectation of support for American policy in Vietnam, "verges on contempt," as The New York Times accurately reported...

...Now they are wondering, not only in Spain and South Vietnam, who can protect them from a careless protector...

...They get little of either...

...There is still, presumably, a European desk in the State Department devoted to European affairs...

...support of the pound...

...Do we, for instance, want a non-proliferation nuclear treaty or do we want West German participation in a nuclear force...

...It reminded him, he said, of the Mogul emperor who banned drinking for everybody except himself...

...In Italy, the problem is the same as in France: how to digest a Communist Party which is the major party of the left...

...We don't question America's interior democracy, he said, but it is practicing fascism abroad—as did Britain in India, and France in Algeria...

...This is unrealism to the point of surrealism...

...Eisenhower never would, and Wilson hopes that he can avoid doing more than playing tail to Mr...

...The greatest, strongest, and most modern nation in the world," wrote the widely read French law professor, Maurice Duverger, in Le Nouvel Ob-servateur, "has resumed the systematic bombing of one of the world's smallest, poorest, and least developed...

...Labor Party Britain has taken another tack...

...It has left Washington counting on a confused Bonn and a feeble Lud-wig Erhard to hold the line, without either knowing exactly what the line is, or should be...

...His new book, "The People of Paris," will be published this summer...

...The war in Vietnam, obviously, has brought a stutter and a stammer to that dialogue, if not yet a full stop...

...Of course we can't send troops," said a Christian Democrat of the West German Bundestag's Defense Committee, "but we could send a little hospital ship...

...Nowhere in the West is any Communist Party (other than Chinese partisans on the fringe) talking either of revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat...

...This Texas Lone Rider stubbornness, the corollary of Lone Star statesmanship, this preoccupation with the little land of Vietnam and the "outlaw" band of Vietcong, is costing us any pretense at leadership of the great continent of Europe...

...In publicly condemning American policy in Vietnam," said a French Socialist, "de Gaulle, once again, is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons...

...In Britain, Prime Minister Harold Wilson has given Washington moral support—a part payment for U.S...

...President Eisenhower hesitated— Dulles told Bidault the United States could take only "joint action" (with Britain)—while Winston Churchill flatly opposed such action...

...That was Conservative Britain...

...Thus American intervention was vetoed by Britain to the infinite relief, at the time, of most Americans...

...Now, perhaps, those hopes must wait entry of Britain into a politically unified Europe with the power to make itself effective in Washington...

...But one might regret that the hopes his first election aroused regarding international relations, the internationalization of nuclear arms, and international good sense in general have not been realized...

...They would talk about the war in Russia, she remarked, and the crusade against Communism, then sigh and say, "Oh, we have so much still to do," and expect sympathy...

...Some minds reached back to a much earlier time, when, on April 3, 1954, French Foreign Minister Georges Bi-dault called on Secretary of State John Foster Dulles with a plea for American intervention at Dienbienphu...

...military task can be completed by the end of 1965," with the withdrawal of a thousand men to begin almost immediately...

...It is not that the Germans are now popular, but, rather, that Americans could not be less popular...

...And the little ship, which was once an excursion boat to Helgoland, where whiskey and perfume are dutyfree, may go to Vietnam in May—a token of West German understanding of America's great mission...

...The expectation was that President Kennedy's second term would see the last act of the Vietnamese tragedy...

...Our President keeps doing the wrong thing for what passes for the right reasons...

...Indeed, he has called for elections on March 31 to bolster his party's strength...

...Japan and West Germany, out of "sympathy" for the American position of non-recognition of China, have no diplomatic relations with Peking...

...The problem is being basically solved in both countries by the respective parties making themselves more palatable—not solely in the propaganda sense, but in reality...

...They are now talking of a reduction and control of Russian and American power as well...

...Even the exceptions are significant...

...policy and action in Asia...

...It has created a vacuum which de Gaulle would gladly fill...

...He was so careful during Er-hard's visit in February that the West German Chancellor left Paris with the comforting illusion that de Gaulle would champion Bonn's position on German unity—that is, by free elections...

...They are developing, more or less painfully, into the parties of a democracy—the speed depending on the evolution of Russia's own Communism, which, in turn, depends on the dialogue among us all...

...It is the same dialogue, East and West (Russia is at least as West as it is East), on which depends the even greater development: the movement towards nuclear control, whose major concern now is a non-proliferation agreement in Geneva...

...A few days later, on April 16, Vice President Richard Nixon sent up a trial balloon, saying publicly, ". . . if, to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and Indo-China, we must take the risk now by putting our boys in, I think the Executive has to take the politically unpopular position and do it...

...In Britain, Prime Minister Wilson's primary concern is, understandably, to remain Prime Minister with a greater margin in Parliament...

...The criticism of Soviet treatment of its two dissident authors by French writer and Communist Central Cornmitteeman Louis Aragon, printed on the front page of I'Humanite, the party's paper, plus his statement that in France, at least, Communism would mean esthetic freedom, is not so much an indication of how things are going as of how far they have already gone...

...Other nations—and not only France and China—are asking more...

...Indeed, India's delegate recently spoke cuttingly of both the American and Russian drafts for a non-proliferation treaty...

...It is no longer assumed that a simple agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States would mean a worldwide agreement...

...Periodically Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara turn up in Paris, report on America's burdens in the Far East to NATO's European "partners," and ask for help—or at least token sympathy—for America's great mission in Asia...

...Fearing betrayal by Paris in Algeria, "as in Indo-China," the Army had brought down the Fourth Republic and was subsequently to attempt putsches against de Gaulle's Fifth...

...Meanwhile, Europe is adrift, marking time in the Common Market, in East-West European relations, in the resolution of old problems such as the division of Germany, and of new problems, including perhaps the greatest of our time: the proliferation of nuclear weapons...

...President Johnson is going it alone in Asia as Mr...

...As a long-time resident I recall Gertrude Stein discussing the German officers during the occupation of World War II...

...Witness this news report from Peking by Tanjug, the Yugoslav news agency: "Great Britain will export four complete factories to China under agreements reached last year...

...Competing with the Ben Barka scandal (involving the French counterpart of our own Central Intelligence Agency) has been French coverage of the American Senate debate on Vietnam, particularly the Foreign Relations Committee hearings under its chairman, Senator J. W. Fulbright...

...It maiy or may not cost him his party's backing some JOSEPH BARRY, a former columnist for The New York Post, is European correspondent for The Progressive...

...Furthermore, de Gaulle has been highly critical of U.S...

...As France lost the Indo-Chinese war in Paris, not Dienbienphu," General Maxwell Taylor is reported to have said, "so the United States can lose its war, not in Vietnam, but in Washington...

...To be sure, Mr...

...Others recalled a later time, when McNamara was one of Europe's most respected Americans, a time that came to a climax in the fall of 1963 with his carefully considered judgment that "the major part of the U.S...

...The most recent memory was in the minds of most Frenchmen, who heard the same cry from the French Army in May, 1958...

...Johnson is not General Eisenhower, who as President took the least military approach of all the men in the White House since World War II, and Harold Wilson's Britain is not Sir Winston's...

...However, there is a new realism among the nations whose representatives confer at Geneva...

...Even de Gaulle is marking time, this being an electoral year and his Parliamentary majority in danger...

...But at least," responded his American friend, no less anti-Gaullist, "he is doing the right thing...

...There is a double-edged irony in this notion, which would otherwise be outrageous...

...Not long ago, nations of the "free world" were coming around to the point of view that they should depend for their protection on America's deterrent...

...Even then, West Germany is by itself the most powerful nation of Western Europe, heading, however reluctantly, towards its leadership, which is de Gaulle's own goal...

...Other nations that have also contracted for complete factories for China are West Germany, Italy, Austria, Finland, and Japan...

...Ironically, France, which is the least hypocritical of the nations "allied" with the United States, is not on the list of countries supplying China, though it is clearly high on Washington's own list of unfriendly allies, and for good reason: De Gaulle has finally stated publicly that he is planning to pull French forces out from under NATO control and push the United States out of France, effective three years hence...

...It is not, however, the riveting of American attention—public as well as official—on Southeast Asia that is resulting in a loss of our European leadership...

...Johnson's kite...

...He is letting President Johnson's presence in Vietnam provide the argument for an independent Europe, while preparing for his own Moscow visit late in June...

...day, but in any case it is part of the new "free world" unrealities...

...Any reading of de Gaulle's memoirs reveals his permanent interest in a weak, which means divided, Germany...

...The most disturbing recollection was in the mind of a German reporter, who recalled "the stab in the back" cry of the German Army after World War I, in its bitter opposition to civil authority—a bitterness that provided an important part of the background to the rise of Nazism...

...From the bombs dropped by accident in Spain to the bombing by calculation of Vietnam—North and South—the view of America from abroad, even when granting us the best of intentions, is that of misadventure...

...It is, rather, the quality of that leadership, as demonstrated in Southeast Asia, and the question of where it will lead...

...Experts are already on the building sites, according to Tanjug, and most of the principal equipment for construction has been delivered...

...His remark stirred memories...