Old Sweet Song

From Germany a fortnight ago came a news report which made a brief page-one splash and then got lost in subsequent European dispatches. The story concerned an organization known as the Bruderschaft, or Brotherhood--a group of German generals and staff officers set up after the war to aid the widows and orphans of dead officers.

This charitable organization, apparently finished with widows and orphans, has turned its thoughts to matters nearer the heart of any good Junker. It has informed President Adenauer of the Western German State that what he really needs is one infantry division by June and an armored division within the next year.

Spokesman for this trigger-happy little group is General Kurt von Manteuffel, an excellent soldier who led the Ardennes break-through in December, 1944. He has been spending a lot of time with Dr. Adenauer, who apparently asked for the advice of the Brotherhood on possible rearming. The reason advanced by the unemployed officers is simple: Germany needs an army to hold off the Russians. Some top Allied military men--Marshal Montgomery and General Tassigny among them--have given tacit approval to this theory.

But two German divisions could do little to stop the Russian Army; a more expensive, no less effective and certainly safer, plan would be to keep occupation forces in Germany as a picket line until the Cold War either freezes or boils over. There are echoes in the urgings of the Brotherhood--unpleasant echoes from Prussia, and the Marne, and the Ardennes.