Less than a month later, on 13 January 1950, Schuman made his promised call on the Chancellor. When he arrived Bonn station was almost empty except for Adenauer, who hurried him to a waiting car as, he explained, he feared an attack on Schuman 'because you French are on the way to absorbing the Saar'.35 Schuman's opening statement was full of faith that Germany and France could co-operate in future, and the two men moved closer together. However, nothing was settled about the Saar, though Adenauer seems to have got the impression that Schuman thought that, one day, the Saar might be returned to Germany: an impression he had also carried away from their previous talk in October 1948. Things, however, did not work out so smoothly. On 3 March the French Government took steps to integrate the Saar into France.36 So, when three of Buchman's friends called on Adenauer on 7 April, they found him greatly incensed with Schuman. 'He is a liar,' Adenauer told them. 'Even Bidault lets me call Schuman a lying Alsatian peasant.' His visitors suggested that, if this were true, Adenauer himself should think how to change Schuman. 'I also need to change more myself,' Adenauer replied, reiterating the impression that the thought of each starting with himself had made upon him at Caux.37

At all events there was a moment when it looked as if the great opportunity might be missed. Jean Monnet noted that there was 'une atmosphère glacée' at the January meeting in Bonn38 and remarked to Schuman, 'We are on the brink of making the same mistake as in 1919,'39even though Adenauer describes their last two-hour session of the meetings as 'characterised by mutual trust'.40 By April there was no doubt about the danger of breakdown. 'We were in an impasse in almost whatever direction we turned . . .we were surrounded by walls,' Schuman said later. 'In order to advance we had to open a breach. First of all we had to get rid of the terrible mortgage of fate - fear. We felt the need of some psychological leap forward. . .'41

Monnet provided that leap by producing his plan for the coal and steel pool which had hurriedly been completed. On 20 April he gave a copy to Bidault who ignored it. On 28 April he passed a copy through his chef de cabinet to Schuman who realised that time was running perilously short if there was to be an agreement by 11 May, when a crucial foreign ministers' conference was to take place. Schuman studied it over a weekend, and said on his return, 'I'll use it.'42 At a lunch with Monnet in the first week of May he suggested that the plan should be introduced in a sudden and dramatic way. They agreed that only two French Ministers, Mayer and Pleven, should be told the details before the Cabinet of 9 May, while Bidault (who dismissed the project as 'a soap bubble - just one more international body') was only told in general terms.43

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