Job for a Pressagent

The crucial battle for the realm of rubble in Europe's heart was coming to a head. The outcome would decide Europe's future and, in large measure, the world's.

Three years ago the Communists had joined the battle under the worst possible conditions. Germans hated Communism, partly because of long years of anti-Communist indoctrination by the Nazis, but Germans also had a deep-rooted historical fear of Slavs, which was further deepened by the Red Army's excesses in looting and vandalism. This barrier of German sentiment against the Red tide had been one of the rock-bottom facts in the cold war. By last week, the fact was tottering under the astute propaganda of the Russians.

The issue which powered the Soviet propaganda drive was the London agreement to establish a Western German government and international control of the Ruhr (TIME, June 14). Its purpose had been to revive Western Germany's great industrial power for the benefit of all of Europe.

So far it had merely divided the Western camp, antagonized the Germans, and given ample aid & comfort to the Reds. In France the agreement produced a political and spiritual crisis (see FOREIGN NEWS). German antiCommunists, the very people the move was designed to help, regarded it as an insult and an injury. German leaders meeting in Duesseldorf to discuss an increase in Ruhr coal production proclaimed self-righteously: "International control of the Ruhr is not justified, because the German authorities are themselves unanimously determined never to allow the Ruhr to become a threat to peace . . ." Cried a cocky German labor leader: "Do you really believe the miners are going to work harder when they know that other countries will take the coal they produce?"

"Worse Than Versailles." The Reds' operative word was the magic "unity." Last week the German "People's Council" (a Communist front) trumpeted that the London plan was "far worse than the Treaty of Versailles." The Reds offered an eight-point counterproposal. The gist: Germany must be one nation, indivisible; an all-German provisional government must be formed immediately; Bizonia and all plans for a Western state must be liquidated; Germany must have a voice in future peace negotiations.

That was precisely the kind of plan that most Germans--anti-Communists or not --passionately wanted to hear. What the West needed last week, among other things, was a good pressagent who could point out to the Germans the Communists' astonishing triple-dealing.

In France the Reds called Germany a threat to French security; in Germany they denounced France and her allies as a threat to German unity. In Germany they openly called for the return of the Eastern German territories ceded to Poland at war's end, and in Poland they denounced any such suggestion as high treason.

Said a U.S. occupation officer in Germany as he listened to the propaganda barrage on all sides of him: "We sit here like ducks in a shooting gallery."

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