"Unless We Resist"

Beneath the mushroom shadow that hung over Berlin, the cold war's moves and countermoves continued. Last week President Kennedy announced that he was sending retired General Lucius Clay, commander of U.S. forces in Europe during the tense days of the 1948-49 airlift, back to Berlin as his personal representative. Berlin knew Clay as a clear-and tough minded man who would report the situation as he saw it without diplomatic sweetening. Cried West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt: "Berlin will welcome him like a homecoming son."

The U.S. also announced that Western foreign ministers will meet in Washington on Sept. 14 for talks leading toward West-East negotiations over Berlin. Preparing legal ground for a future stand, the U.S. last week produced a 14-year-old document in which the Soviet Union indirectly acknowledged the right of unrestricted Allied flights to Berlin.

Although neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. has much to negotiate about, the hard fact remained: there is no other, easier way out of the cold war confrontation in Berlin. That fact was eloquently underlined last week in an exchange of letters to the New York Times. Replying to a writer who had argued that the U.S. ought to forget about Berlin and concentrate on broad social reforms as a way of winning the cold war, New York University's Philosophy Professor Sidney Hook said: "To imply that we can contain Communism by a more dynamic policy of social reform is like arguing that if England had abolished its slums and liberated its colonies, Hitler would have been halted in his campaigns of aggression. Reforms and a dynamic policy by all means. But unless .we resist aggression, how can they be carried out?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.