Weird Unreality

A peculiar request highlighted a peculiar situation last week. Britain, France and the U.S. asked the Kremlin to let an international commission search Russia for missing German prisoners of war.

In April 1947 Russia agreed to repatriate all German P.W.s by the end of 1948. But she has kept many--presumably for slave labor, Communist indoctrination, or both. Russia claims that she holds only 13,546 German prisoners. Yet 90,000 Germans still in Soviet hands have written to their families, and returning prisoners have given the names of some 300,000 others still in the U.S.S.R. The Western powers believe that there are also 350,000 Japanese prisoners still in Russian hands.

Britain, France and the U.S. had no expectation that Moscow would comply with the request to admit a search party. The fact that they even made such a request underscores the weird unreality of diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. In effect, the notes say that the Western powers simply do not believe the Soviet government, and consider it quite capable of either murdering or enslaving hundreds of thousands of helpless prisoners.

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