'As Much Menace As Hitler’

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30035, 21 January 1963, Page 11

'As Much Menace As Hitler’

(NZ^^-KnUr—Copyright) LONDON, January 20. The “Sunday Telegraph” said today that President de Gaulle is now as much of a menace as was Adolf Hitler 30 years ago.

“Just as we could not believe then that a man with his feet in the gutter could wreak such havoc, so now we find it difficult to believe that a man with his head in the clouds can do likewise,” the newspaper said.

"In fact admiration can mislead just as much as contempt; and France's present leader must strike some people as no less of a menace in the circumstances of the thermo-nuclear age, no less deformed by bitter grievances, no less antagonistic to orderly co-operation, no less heedless of other countries' interests, and no less obsessed by delusions of grandeur than were the Germans 30 years ago.

“Anybody who is shocked by the vehemence of this description should read the full text of the general's statement on Monday, and study the subsequent shock tactics of Mr Couve de Murville at Brussels.”

The "Sunday Telegraph" said: “It is vital that people in Europe should understand how the logic of his policy leads straight to a FrancoRussian deal over Germany’s head, for which he has no mandate.

“Gener-i de Gaulle is signalling to Moscow that here in the West is one man, one country, ready to risk a breakdown of the Atlantic Alliance.

“By keeping Britain out (of the Common Market), he wounds the free world. By seeking to exclude America he aims at its jugular.”

The “Observer” commented: “All parties in Britain are committed to maintaining the Atlantic Alliance as a basis of our existence.

"But Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Holland are equally committed to the policy of Interdependence as against national independence.

"This concept fits the realities of power far better than

General de Gaulle's faith in national sovereignty, which seems to belong rather to the eighteenth century. "The arguments for moving towards an Atlantic community and for sharing in some kind of multilateral nuclear force are so overwhelming that the Government should not hesitate to take its stand on this issue. “It should have the support not only of the Americans, but of the Dutch, the Belgians, the Italians, of most Germans apart from Dr. Adenauer, and of many Frenchmen.”