"Enough to Make You Sick"

What about the Germans, who still hold Europe's key? Last week brought some news, but little encouragement.

In Munich, the Lander Presidents from all zones of Germany met to discuss economic problems, showed themselves as little united as their conquerors. Scarcely twelve hours after their arrival, the delegates from the Russian zone rose, stomped out of the blustery night session in the best Gromyko tradition. Cracked slick, scrappy Rudolph Paul, Russian-appointed President of Thuringia, as he climbed into his shiny Maybach for the trip home, "This is a fine democracy you have here when a man can't even make a speech. It's enough to make you sick."

To what extent did German differences reflect disputes between the occupying powers? Last week, when the U.S. failed to make good all of its food import quota, the Russians refused to continue food supplies for all sectors of Berlin. On the third anniversary of Dday, a scorching editorial in the Berlin Soviet mouthpiece Taegliche Rundschau asserted that U.S. and British airmen had sought out German cities for destruction during the war, neglected military targets. General Lucius D. Clay, U.S. commander in Germany, quietly commented: "I would not dignify that kind of charge with a formal protest." Convinced that a divided Germany would be more than a temporary Condition, the Anglo-Americans this week gave authorization to a tightened bizonal economic administration. Its job: the challenging one of making Western German economy selfsupporting.

Germans did not seem inspired to cooperation by the creation of Bizonia. Recently, at a party rally, bumptious demagogic Social Democrat Kurt Schumacher had shouted: "We Germans don't want to sell ourselves to either side, not for the Potemkin promises of Marshal Zhukov nor for the CARE packages from America." Apparently the Germans were not yet ready to contribute anything to the future of Europe except hard words and the hope that they might translate U.S.-Russian division into German nationalist advantage.

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