REARMING OF GERMANY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27405, 19 July 1954, Page 9

REARMING OF GERMANY

Reported Split In Allied Thinking (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 17. Germany’s future was developing into an issue that could damage United States-British relations as seriously as the present difference in attitude toward Communist China, a “New York Times’’ correspondent reported from London today. The correspondent said that the Americans thought that the British were going too fast and too far in their relations with Communist China, but many Britons thought precisely the same about the United States approach to Germany. In the last few days British apprehension over German rearmament had assumed a more national aspect than in the past, because of the decision to separate the Bonn Peace Contract from the European Defence Community Treaty and grant West Germany sovereignty by autumn.

The correspondent said that many Britons thought that once the Germans got their sovereignty there would be no holding them. For this reason newspapers and politicians of the Right, led by Lord Beaverbrook’s “Daily Express,’’ had joined the Left wing of the Labour Party in proclaiming the dangers of giving Germany too much freedom too soon

The independent Sunday newspaper, the “Observer,” said today that the rearming of Germany was expected to begin this year. General Gruenther, the Supreme Commander of S.H.A.P.E., has been informed that the objective of the recent British and American conversations in London was specifically to ensure a minimum of delay in raising German divisions even if France did. not ratify the European Defence Community Treaty. The “Observer” said it was the firm opinion of British and American experts on Germany that unless the process of restoring sovereignty begins very soon, the growth of anti-Western feeling will be dangerous.

For the same reason it was thought necessary that full sovereignty should include the right to rearm.

UNITY FOR GERMANY EAST’S MESSAGE TO WEST (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 17. East Germany today warned West Germany “not to continue a course of sabre-rattling” but to open East-West German unity talks. It also urged West Germany to abandon the Bonn conventions and the European Defence Treaty. These points were made in a message from the East German Volkskammer (Lower House) to the West German Federal Electoral College which met to re-elect President Theodor Heuss. “If you seriously want German reunification and a peaceful solution of the European problem accept our offer for unity talks,” the message said. The Bonn Conventions and E.D.C. Treaty—which would restore German sovereignty and set up a European Army, including Germans—would have fatal consequences if they were realised, the message said. “These treaties supported by the man whom you are going to re-elect today are incompatible with hopes for the restoration of German sovereignty. “There is no other way to overcome the fatal split of Germany than by East-West German negotiations.”

WEST GERMANY’S PRESIDENT PROFESSOR HEUSS RE-ELECTED (Rec. 9 p.m.) BERLIN, July 17. Professor Theodor Heuss, who is 70, was today re-elected President of the West German Federal Republic for a second five-year term. A Federal Electoral College consisting of nearly 1000 Federal and State Parliamentary Deputies chose him again by 871 votes to 12. President Heuss’s re-election was a foregone conclusion because all the major parties had agreed on him. The Communists opposed him on the grounds that he was “a lackey of the American imperialists” and of German militarism. But with only 10 Communists in the electoral college it was a hopeless cause. The Communist candidate, Professor Alfred Weber, aged 85, a Social Democratic teacher of sociology at Heidelberg University, attracted only two votes besides the Communist ones. In his speech of accession, President Heuss urged the Germans not to be too boastful about their economic strength, or to get worked up by the "self-intoxication of noisy words.” He condemned as shortsighted the Yalta and Potsdam agreements which split Germany and stripped her of her Eastern territories. He demanded a free and united Germany as an “equal partner of a broad and free community of peoples,” and urged other European countries not to hamstring efforts at European integration.

Princess Margaret Leaves Germany. —Princess Margaret left by air today for London after a three-day visit to the British forces in Germany. She talked today with the wives of 58 British servicemen separated from their husbands since last October. At a N.A.A.F.I. club near Dusseldorf she visited the wives whose husbands are serving in Trieste with the Ist Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, of which she is Colonel-in-Chief.— Bruegoen (North-west Germany), July