COUNTER-ATTACK IN BERLIN

...Koestler bitterly attacked the Socialist attitude toward international problems...

...Stressing the fact that the Congress was being asked too often to be "against" too much, he added: "Let us renew the idea of freedom by creating new institutions, new values so as to make a world in which the fundamental rights, needs, and aspirations of the workers will be satisfied...

...A permanent committee of 12 members, international in scope and realistic in purpose, was constituted to maintain the link between the writers, thinkers, and artists who, throughout the world, have pledged themselves to fight for cultural freedom and the fundamental rights of man...

...But members whose immediate interests were not exclusively the political battle against Communism were given a minimum of time to speak on the subject of their choice...

...But we know that if war should come, whoever wins, we shall be the vanquished...

...The money came from various non-governmental organizations like the American Federation of Labor...

...Andre Philip, a typical French speech-maker, alternating flourish and drama, said that today Communism is the extreme right...

...Elliott Cohen took part in a discussion of the Jewish problem in Germany...

...Seminars and forums were organized during the week...

...But with the diversity of opinions and backgrounds represented, the principal delegates had to indulge in some pushing around in order to prevent an intellectual and political free-for-all...

...Attendance at the Communist rally in the Lutsgarten, you see, was somewhat compulsory...

...With the help of Melvin J. Lasky, American editor of the magazine Der Monat, they established an honorary committee of sponsorship, composed of Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher, John Dewey, Karl Jaspers, Jacques Maritain, and Bertrand Russell...

...This prevented some delegates from expressing their views on significant problems of cultural interest and on some qf the" more pressing problems facing intellectuals everywhere...

...Thus, the Communist leaders felt, a number of inhabitants from the east sector would be prevented from going into the western sector to hear the speeches by Arthur Koestler, Eugen Kogon, David Rous-set...

...Other members, who had come prepared to contribute their ideas on how to improve mass culture, how to influence and improve means of disseminating the arts, science, and literature, had little opportunity to express their ideas in the midst of the highly charged political atmosphere of this cultural conference...

...At the outset, it became clear that a great number of delegates who were former Communist Party members and refugees from the Iron Curtain countries, would inject into this cultural meeting a rather formidable dose of political medicine...

...We cannot expect to fight the extreme right with the means used by the moderate center," he said...

...Carmen de Gurtubay had prepared a long documented paper on the impact of totalitarian rule on a highly civilized culture—that of Spain under Franco...

...Eleanor Roosevelt, David Lilienthal, Francois Mauriac, the French Catholic writer, Tennessee Williams, and R. H. S. Cross-man, the British Laborite, failed to appear, either through bad plane connections or last-minute unwillingness to participate for reasons best known to themselves...

...During the week, the Congress wrote and approved a manifesto denouncing totalitarian methods and proclaiming that only total freedom can be the breeding ground of culture...

...Second, an argument developed between Koestler and the leftists and Socialists...

...Haakon Lie, secretary-general of the Norwegian Socialist Party, answered Koestler by pointing out that in the countries where Socialism is in power, in the Scandinavian countries and Britain, the Communist Party has attracted its weakest following because of the social and economic progress achieved under Socialism...

...Max Yergan and George Schuyler, of the Pittsburgh Courier, spoke about the Negro problem in America...

...She had to keep her speech to a few minutes...

...This latter group, without approving the neutrality position as such, supported the view that the Congress should fight totalitarian methods everywhere, and not only in the Soviet sphere...

...A mass meeting was whipped up in the eastern sector of Berlin the same day and at the same hour as that of the final open air meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom...

...Sixteen countries, including some under the Soviet rule, were represented, the latter, of course, by refugees from Soviet suppression...

...Durand was that paper's correspondent in Washington and New York tor several years...

...The idea of the Congress originated in Berlin, where Oberburger-meister Ernst Reuter and two German professors, Edwin Redslob, rector of the Free University, and Dr...

...On the subject of neutrality, which is perhaps more acutely felt in French circles, Philip had this to say: "The tragedy of Europe is that we cannot find a solution in neutrality...

...The Soviet threat, they argued, must not overshadow all the other objectives of the Left—the fight for social progress, economic improvement, freedom of the press and of expression in countries like Franco Spain...

...The Congress also provided a common meeting place for thinkers of many countries who discussed problems of common interest for the first time in many years...

...Andre Philip, Socialist member of the French Assembly, and Ignazio Silone, the Italian writer...

...Some delegates, like Sidney Hook, sought to maintain a balance, by pointing out that the Congress was to be a free exchange of ideas...

...III The savage attacks by the German Communist press, calling the Congress a gathering of "the watchdogs of Wall Street," were proof that the Soviet authorities did not take the Congress lightly...

...He emphasized that in the fight for life or death that must be joined with Communism, there was no room for left or right...

...Some of the big names scheduled to attend, Mrs...

...It belongs neither to planned economy nor to...

...II After the inaugural meeting, witnessed by 2,000 guests in the movie theater Titania Palatz, the Congress settled down to business...

...In Frankfort, one of the organizers reported that a squadron of USAF fighter planes would take off ahead of the Congress plane, and "clear the air corridor over the Soviet zone...

...Freedom," he said, "is a process and not a program...

...The answer, according to Koestler, must be clear: Yes-Yes or No-No...

...free enterprise...

...Security measures taken to protect some of the delegates were conspicuously displayed...

...Andre Philip had a chance to give 300 union leaders of Germany an inside report on the French steel-coal plan, while David Rousset compared notes with the German organization, under Rainer Hildebrandt, on the best way to cope with concentration camps in Russia and elsewhere...

...In Berlin, some 30 policemen were on hand to take charge of the delegates whose security might be threatened...

...LIONEL DURAND, foreign editor of Paris Presse, roams Europe constantly for the second largest daily in the French capital...

...Counter-Attack in Berlin By LIONEL DURAND Berlin FOR 20 years, Berlin had seen nothing like the "Congress for Cultural Freedom," which took place in the British Sector of the city during the last week of June...

...Otto Suhr, head of the Institute of Political Studies, decided some months ago that there must be a democratic answer to the Communist propaganda in favor of freedom and peace...

...However, the meeting did produce some positive results: It clearly demonstrated to the German people that a form of solidarity existed between intellectuals and artists of the free world and those like the Berliners, who have been living, suffering, and sometimes fighting, though without guns, inside a city in ruins, located literally in the bear's mouth...

...Three divergent trends were soon to develop: First, the main battle, fought between those who, like James Burn-ham and Arthur Koestler, felt that one of the great dangers faced by the non-totalitarian world was the trend toward neutrality (by those whom Koestler called the hesitant and the meek, "the half-virgins of democracy") and on the other side, by men like David Rousset, formerly a prisoner in Buchenwald, who launched the idea of a commission of inquiry to investigate all concentration camps existing at present...

...More than 200 intellectuals, scientists, philosophers, and artists— "political long-hairs," chided an American reporter—gathered for free discussion of a vast variety of subjects...

...Thus, one could hardly expect anything resembling decisive results from such a gathering, meant to be more a demonstration than a congress...

...Arthur Koestler was among the former Communists and refugees provided with a courteous but firm "shadow...

...This particular aspect of the Congress in Berlin led to the third controversy: obviously, aggressive headliners like Koestler, Burnham, Silone had full opportunity to present their views...