leader Rainer Barzel rushed to Washington (after having hit against dead wood in Moscow and Warsaw) to see if he could get some assistance on the question of the Ostpolitik. He made many loyal declarations from Washington on the need for a fair trade agree- ment between Europe and the US; but indications are that no one in the US was fooled. Back home, he found the sly Strauss had already staged a minor coup: he had published the CSU version of the Non-Aggression Treaties to prove that the opposition criticism of the existing treaties was constructive. It led to some confusion in the opposition, but only on forms. In its context, the CSU draft, opening the door wide for all possible subversion in the name of non-aggression, had the stinted support of the opposition, The treaties, in their present forms, have not only been re- jected by the opposition-dominated Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, but the party has moved the Federal Court to decide upon the con- stitutional validity of the treaties. Its promise of "total confrontation' with the Ostpolitik has thus been kept Meanwhile, thanks to the 'Ink-Bomb' Britain's entry into Europe elicited more attention than the occasion might other- wise have done. But the entry, as anticipated, has created as many problems for Europe as it solved for Britain. One already hears of a London-Paris axis excluding Bonn. The capitalist political cycle, like the economic cycle, seems now to have turned full circle. But no one needs to fear; modern Social Democrats could not react the same way as the petty-bourgeoisie of the Third Reich. Besides, all of capitalist Europe, irrespective of the different parties ruling its constituent units, has many common enemies and friends. The West German Social Democrats have already shown the way to keep their houses in order, so as to face the common enemies squarely.
