2. The Deceptive Mood:

...headlined one paper, calling the picture "a questionable joke...

...Daniel Schorr is head of the Columbia Broadcasting System's news bureau for Germany and Eastern Europe...

...Consequently, they feel it would be a fine idea to counter a blockade of Berlin with a blockade of the Baltic or the Dardanelles to Soviet and East German shipping...

...And the West Berlin papers, as if sensing that their readers are more in need of being reassured than stirred up, give less attention to Khrushchev's threats than to Western promises...

...This city knows that tanks could not start rolling just because a piece of paper had been signed...

...At the end of July, the All-German Evangelical Congress will be held here, and the Ulbricht regime has already clamped down restrictions at the Berlin sector border to prevent East Germans from attending...

...At this writing, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is about to depart from Bonn for a Berlin visit, and there are rumblings from the East that his trip will be treated as a "provocation...

...All in all, the provisions amount to $400 million worth of goods, and cost $25 million a year to store and guard...

...They might decide to do so, but they would not feel they had to...

...There seemed remarkably little excitement, for example, early one recent morning, when some 4,000 U.S...

...A first minor measure might be a ban on Western travel for East German officials, which seemed to irk them when it was tried out last autumn in response to Communistimposed travel restrictions...

...West Berlin officials think it oversanguine to believe that after a peace treaty was signed, all the Allies would have to face would be an East German rubber stamp on transit papers...

...Although the signing of a peace treaty has been set for the end of the year, not many people here believe there will be much breathing space before then...

...It was far from enough power to defend this city against the estimated 20 Soviet divisions and the East German Army that surround it...

...There would be time to warn the Russians of the consequences of their (or the East Germans') action, time to organize and time for deliberate action...

...These are part of the emergency stockpile that the city has been laying in since 1949, when the last blockade ended—a stockpile that now exceeds anything that any city has ever stored up...

...Only an attempt to interfere with access to Berlin would bring strong American action, according to this rumor...

...There are also indications that the Communists plan a major step for September, possibly using as a pretext the rally of refugees and expellees from Eastern Europe that brought about the "baby blockade" last autumn...

...It has been carefully planned, divided between material to keep people going and material to keep the economy going...

...In addition, trade sanctions could be imposed on East Germany that would really hurt...

...West Berlin would have to work things out not so much with the Allies as with their own West German brothers, who do a half-billion dollars worth of business a year with East Germany...

...Not for us...

...A lot of other steps could be taken, however...

...Here, it was taken as one of the facts of a rather uneasy life, a power display that was comforting rather than frightening...

...Such an exercise would have caused consternation in New York or Chicago...

...Mayor Willy Brandt hailed the presence of the movie folk from 47 countries as a sign of solidarity with this outpost city, but the bobby-soxers and autograph hounds who haunt the hotels and whistle at the low-cut gowns seemed to have an interest not overwhelmingly political...

...This stockpile would keep a blockaded Berlin going, at a reduced standard of living, for six to eight months...

...Ulbricht has already asked for the cooperation of other East European governments, presumably to try to disguise the real motivation behind cutting off personal access...

...Jayne Mansfield has been making bigger headlines here than Senator Mike Mansfield, whose activities, though less eye-catching, could conceivably have a more lasting effect on West Berlin's future...

...But Berliners are encouraged by the thought that if the small contingent of American troops should become engaged in defense of the city, other and more powerful forces would be engaged elsewhere...

...West Berlin's concern with its own fate is written in things that a casual visitor does not see at first glance...

...But he would be wrong...

...Much thinking has also been done about which services would be continued and which would be cut out during a blockade...

...troops suddenly deployed around the American sector in a surprise alert...

...Like the front-line soldier, the Berliner tends to dramatize his own fate less than those far away on the "home front...

...And another called Ustinov's effort simply "stupid...

...Traveling around the city, for example, one notices innocent-looking structures and piles of stones...

...West Berlin's desire to leave the Allies with time to think bespeaks a deep and abiding confidence that the West will act when the chips are down...

...And the Communists would have good reason for closing the border: The outflow of East Germans, now running at 4,700 a week (or one every three minutes), is expected to reach massive proportions by September, as the year-end crisis comes closer...

...By Daniel Schorr 2. The Deceptive Mood West Berlin If Nikita Khrushchev, in general's uniform and all, had come walking down the Kurfuerstendamm early this month, there is some doubt whether he would have attracted much attention...

...Not many citizens bothered to watch Premier Khrushchev talking about them on television in his June 15 speech to the Russian people, though one of the dubious advantages of being surrounded by East Germany is the opportunity to tune in on Communist TV...

...It is easy to mistake surface calm for unconcern...

...A tourist on a brief visit might think that the Berlin crisis exists only in the chancelleries of Moscow and Washington, and not in Berlin itself...

...Municipal officials say that the six to eight months of grace could be critical...

...Thus, the city fathers would not provide gasoline for pleasure driving, but they would keep street lights and neon signs blazing to preserve the symbol of a shining West Berlin in the gloom of East Germany...

...There is some uneasiness, though, as to whether the city's friends will know when the chips have started falling...

...West Berlin was holding its 11th annual international film festival, and Berliners acted more besieging than besieged...

...Military deterrents, they reason, will tend to cancel each other out, and the issue will be decided by whether the West can muster other deterrents...

...The Allies would not be under pressure to break through to Berlin immediately with an armed convoy...

...If they seem more excited about glamour than ultimatums, this is probably because they have lived with threats too long...

...It has been reported (though not supported by the official record, we are told) that in Vienna, President Kennedy left Khrushchev with the impression that America would not respond vigorously to Russia's signing a separate peace treaty with East Germany and turning over the control of access routes to the regime of Walter Ulbricht...

...The Communists have more than once specifically said that a treaty would mean a lot more—a demand for the negotiation of written agreements with the East German authorities on access, the possible closing of Tempelhof Airport and the undoubted closing of the Marienfelde refugee reception center...

...To Berliners the cold war remains serious business, however, as the organizers of this year's film festival discovered when they chose to open with Peter Ustinov's Romanoff and Juliet, a light-hearted spoof of the East-West contest...

...But Berlin and its future, top headlines elsewhere, took a back seat in Berlin itself to what one newspaper called "the festival of the upper part of the body...

...It might be enough to help the local police cope with infiltration and attempts to incite riots...

...The gulf between West Berlin and West Germany is reflected in a feeling prevalent here that this city gets less wholehearted support from the Ruhr than from Washington and Paris...

...To maintain morale and prevent mass unemployment, Berlin would go on filling orders and making goods, even though it could not deliver them immediately...

...They provide them not only with vitally needed steel and machinery, but even with equipment to jam Western broadcasts...

...City officials believe that the West has been thinking of Berlin's defense too much as a military problem and not enough as an economic and political one...

...This year, it is thought, the East German authorities may close the sector border for good to keep not only East Germans but nationals of other East European countries from entering West Berlin...

...It would be deceptive, though, to think that the 2.5 million West Berliners are carefree...

...On 375 acres of open ground and in 150 acres of warehouses, enough to make up a small town in itself, West Berlin has piled up three million tons of coal, and supplies of liquid fuel, cement, concrete, food, medicine and even newsprint...

...Machine guns were set up at key points, tanks rumbled through the streets, combatclad soldiers took up positions around Tempelhof Airport...

...It is true that the Montana Democrat, who has ideas about internationalizing Berlin, has not yet thought of visiting a kitchen dressed in a bikini, or of splashing in the fountain of a hotel courtyard...

...Despite all this, the beaches of the Wannsee are crowded and the lights on the Kurfuerstendamm are bright at night...