"Don't Leave Us"

In Washington last week, General Lucius D. Clay, U.S. occupation boss in Germany, was optimistic. As he prepared for the surrender of the U.S. Army's occupation duties to the State Department next summer, General Clay reported: all-important

Ruhr coal was coming out of the ground at a postwar record of 254,000 tons daily; aside from food imports, Bizonia had a favorable trade balance during the past year.

While Clay spoke Germany was shaken by the biggest strikes since pre-Hitler days. The walkouts protesting food shortages, which had started in the Ruhr (TIME, Jan. 26), shifted to Bavaria; more than a million Germans in 26 cities and scores of towns laid down their tools.

The strike wave had some ugly breakers. In N&252;rnberg, 30,000 workers jammed the former Adolf Hitler Platz, where they listened to nationalist harangues beneath signs proclaiming: WE DEMAND GERMAN UNITY. In a Frankfurt movie theater, when a newsreel showed the American Friendship Train carrying food to Germany's neighbors, the audience yelled: "The Americans will let us starve. Let them go to hell!"

The situation which had provoked the strikes was, at least in part, the fault of the Germans. Much of the food that could raise the workers' diet above its present semi-starvation level was either hoarded by German farmers or sold on the black market. Until the farmers met their food quotas, workers in Western Germany would go hungry. Last week, an emergency session of the Bizonal Economic Council (the highest German-run agency in the U.S.-British zone) passed a law to pry the food from the farm leaders. Henceforth, farmers and food handlers who failed to report all their stocks could be fined up to $10,000, get three years in jail.

Clay's optimistic picture was not necessarily erased by these troubles. Last week's anti-American outbursts did not mean that the U.S. was losing the cold war or that many Germans were turning toward Red salvation. One demonstrator was asked by a correspondent whether he thought it would be better for the Americans to pull out of Germany. Said the worker: "For God's sake, don't leave us. Of course we strike to try to get unity and more food. Who wouldn't? But we don't want the Americans to leave. So dof ist keiner [nobody is that cracked]. Then we would have only the Russians."

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