Europe: The Dam Builders

As the official French government plane taxied to a stop under the glowering skies at Bonn's shabby Wahn Airport, a red carpet was rolled out to the landing stairs. From the plane stepped the towering figure of Charles de Gaulle, who, as the first French chief of state to visit Germany officially since 1870, had come on a historic mission: to cement a lasting bond of friendship and unity between two ancient foes. "The mountain," said one spectator, "has come to Mohammed."

De Gaulle warmly greeted West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was beaming like a boy at his own birthday party. To the cheering thousands, De Gaulle proclaimed the importance of his visit in inimitable Gaullist language. Said he: "In the depths of my soul, I feel how significant and gripping are my presence on your soil and my contact with your country."

By car, plane and Rhine river boat. De Gaulle made contact indefatigably for the next five days. Police officials, terrified at the ever present prospect of an S.A.O. attempt to assassinate France's President. blanched at his indifference to security precautions. In Bonn and Cologne, De Gaulle pressed against police lines, shaking hands and murmuring. "Guten Tag, guten Tag." In Hamburg he scorned a limousine that the city fathers had just had bulletproofed for $3,000, insisted on riding in an open car instead. Cops with walkie-talkies endlessly scanned the crowds. Doctors and nurses dogged the President's footsteps with bandages, collapsible stretchers and supplies of his rare blood type (0-Rh negative). Reporters kept telephone lines open to flash word of any assassination attempt, and police dogs sniffed the fields outside the castles and homes where De Gaulle slept.

Though political union with France is a vague abstraction to most West Germans, the crowds responded eagerly to De Gaulle's outstretched hands, his praise for the "great German volk." Though he privately feels that the Common Market is already big enough, in the trade-minded port city of Hamburg De Gaulle disclaimed any intent of excluding other nations from the European community.

L'union, Pourquoi? Speaking without notes, mostly in grammatically flawless, if unmistakably Gaullist German. De Gaulle returned repeatedly to the thematic words: "Deutsch-Franzosische Freund-schaft" (Franco-German friendship). The most explicit and concentrated statement of De Gaulle's plans for Europe was delivered at a state banquet at the Augustusburg Castle in Briihl—ironically, once the residence in exile of Louis XIV's Cardinal Mazarin, an early evangelist of France's longstanding policy of keeping Germany weak and divided. "Every word in the speech is worthy of exegetical study, like a Biblical text," exclaimed one of Adenauer's close advisers.

De Gaulle did not disguise his grand Carolingian design for a Europe dominated by the two nations. France and Germany, he emphasized, must urgently "reinforce their solidarity." Said he: "If we have put aside our quarrels and strife, it is not in order to doze. From this reconciliation we must fashion a common source of power, influence and deeds. L'union, pourquoi?"