EUROPE IN 1950
Rubin, Morris H.
EUROPE IN 1950 By MORRIS H. RUBIN THE title of this political travelogue is" somewhat more expansive than the actual itinerary of my 14,000-mile swing through only three countries—France, Germany,...
...He was critical of the hasty acquiescence of the Western Allies in the partition of Germany...
...There are distinguished exceptions among the correspondents, of course, but too few...
...Mollet, who was vice premier when Leon Blum was France's number one man, told me the melancholy story of the Socialist Party's present dilemma...
...de Gaulle for the present...
...The hunger for peace is everywhere...
...During the evening I spent with Ruhr industrialists in Dusseldorf, I asked them whether it were true, as their opponents charged, that they were so totally unprincipled that they would as quickly make a deal with the Russians as with the West...
...The tax system is shockingly unsound and provokes wholesale evasion...
...Four professors, three Germans and one American, with whom I talked reported precisely the same observations...
...Carlo Schmid...
...The Foreign Minister, however, has an enthusiastic following among the party's rank-and-file...
...When the national election was held three years ago, the Gaullists were not formally a political party, as they are now, but, in the concept of their frostily aloof leader, a patriotic rally of the French people...
...When they heard the news, the Social Democrats were outraged...
...And yet at the same time you want us to blossom out overnight as a perfect democracy...
...The tensions are tremendous, for Berlin lies in the heart of the Soviet Zone of Germany, and its inhabitants feel themselves caught in a great nutcracker...
...Both claim they will gain greatly in a new election, but the relatively more objective pulse-takers whom I consulted felt that neither would come close to anything resembling a majority and, of course, would never make a deal between themselves to wrest power from the present coalition...
...It isn't a pretty or hopeful picture, but if one considers the past, and especially the recent past, one must conclude, possibly Pollyanna-wise, that it might have been a great deal worse...
...He was lass sanguine about the attitude of U. S. officials...
...Babies get, again completely free, the cod-liver oil, orange juice, and milk needed to give them as fair a start in life as it is possible to provide...
...Reuter is mayor of the French, British, and U. S. sectors, but not the Russian...
...As a Rhinelander, Adenauer has also favored a strong alliance between France and Germany, and he insisted that today he is more than ever convinced that Franco-German friendship is the basis for peace in Europe...
...Integration" is the word used by Paul Hoffman, boss of the Marshall Plan, and his ECA subordinates...
...At Socialist Party headquarters the next day I was informed that Soustelle sought in vain a while ago to make an alliance with the Socialists...
...But more sober leaders, as, for instance, M. Sou-stelle, with whom I spent a morning, claim 38 to 42%, which, he said, would enable them to form a coalition with any responsive party except the Communists and the extreme Right...
...Actually, I would dare to suggest that it is no, stronger here than it is in England and the United States...
...The Red indictment of things as they are is often close to the mark, especially when the Communists mute their Marxism and hammer away at such close-to-home problems as low wages, high prices, the serious shortage of decent housing, and inequitable taxation...
...Karl Arnold, widely regarded as an able and forward-looking man...
...He thought that perhaps a modus vivendi was not possible right now, but why not a modus non vivendi...
...As for the Atlantic Pact and its accompaniment—an American-financed European army—both of which I have opposed, I found a diversity of opinion, but a preponderance of supporting sentiment...
...There just can't be war again—for if there is, it will be the last time around for everyone...
...In an effort to widen their following, the West German Communists have created a series of organizations, the latest of which is the National Front, designed to lure the discontented who can't quite stomach the Communist label...
...in Great Britain officials of the Labor Government and editors of the Left press were unanimous in rejecting the concept of a European-wide economy in which they would be a partner...
...Among the Social Democrats, I had interviews with Kurt Schumacher, chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD...
...I thought, too, of the worker in Bochum, in the Ruhr, who pointed to the pulverized rubble of what was once a great steel mill...
...his Minister of refugees, Lukaschek...
...It is impossible to coordinate into one integrated economy governments with planned economies, like Britain, and governments with free enterprise economies, like Germany...
...He hastened to add, however, that war was not inevitable, but could be prevented by a great show of force by the West...
...especially if you encounter, as I did, able, sincere, and persuasive men and women of good-will in almost all camps...
...There were four parties, however, which campaigned with tickets throughout the new republic...
...I found him articulate, responsive, immaculately groomed, and well-informed—qualities which could of course be part of a man who was a chronic, cunning liar, but also of a straightforward teller of the truth...
...In my search of an understanding of what the Gaullists are and what they are up to, I came away, after shaking down a multiplicity of opinions, with these impressions: Gen...
...The same treatment was accorded High Commissioner McCloy when he responded to another series of scare stories by Middleton, with the statement that "the bulk of the German people have set their faces against militarism and Nazism...
...The Russians are shrewd enough," he pointed out, "to know they can get a better return on their political investment by supporting Nationalists instead of Communists...
...Equal Shares" is an appealing slogan...
...In England, I interviewed Prime Minister Clement Attlee, officials of the Treasury and of Health and Housing, spokesmen for the Conservative Party, several of the most articulate of the Labor Party's backbenchers in the House of Commons, students and professors at Oxford, U. S. Embassy and Marshall Plan officials, and, again, a host of newspaper and radio editors and correspondents (British and American...
...Many of the rest didn't know or didn't care to say...
...There won't be war if you keep cool...
...another was professor of the history of science...
...About the same," he replied...
...I haven't any idea whether the Germans will respond...
...It was while I was in Europe that our own Marshall Plan officials conducted a poll of public opinion in France, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway...
...They like the way he gets up at their meetings, drops his "h's" and spins yarns about the way he tells the striped pants crowd in the Foreign Office where to get off...
...French politics will be very much in the news in the months just ahead...
...Nor is the Labor Party heavily endowed with dramatic leadership —but it does have a program of its own...
...Let them have their say, but not their way...
...Number One man in CDU-CSU, and in the Government, is Konrad Adenauer, 73—able, adroit, aloof, conservative, and Catholic, who was elected Chancellor by one vote...
...If I dared to send it, I'd be fired in a moment for being anti-Semitic...
...Fear of Russia is great...
...Nine days later I was back in Frankfort, where I dismissed the car, caught a train for Berlin, spent four days there, flew back to Frankfort, and headed for Paris...
...Anthony Eden, his first lieutenant and heir-apparent, is thought to be too cold and aloof to inspire a mass following...
...without them, as without the votes of any one of the other partners, the coalition would collapse...
...The Communists seem to have ample resources for its own press and posters...
...These are all for free now...
...He was all smiles...
...Those who do wander out into the country are usually on the hunt for evidence of a revival of Nazism, which they know will make acceptable copy at home...
...That evening, in fact far into the night, I was the guest of a half-dozen of the leading industrialists of the Ruhr...
...What makes me come up with this two-pronged conclusion that Labor will win the election but lose a considerable slice of its former following...
...How can you be enthusiastic when you're always on the defensive...
...As one of the most articulate put it: "Of course there are risks in the de Gaulle movement and philosophy, but to insist on a course which has no risks is the greatest risk of all...
...Although he is a leading deputy in the ruling coalition, he was emphatic in his comment that "while French recovery, as it shows up in official statistics, is impressive enough, it has not affected all classes, but rather mostly the top...
...Inevitably, with this procedure, I was exposed to a massive array of contradictory stories...
...The London Economist put it this way: "It is doubtful whether the political conditions have been created in Europe for the revolution in national policies which is being demanded by Mr...
...You may not like some or all of the program...
...Carlo Schmid said, and many another leader in all political camps agreed, that "the best possible aid America can tender Europe is to force the various national states, through the Marshall Plan, away from their present tendencies toward autarchy...
...The total CDU-CSU vote of 7,357,579 votes gave it 139 seats in the Bundestag...
...I bounced around with bug-eyed excitement wherever the trail seemed warm...
...A few days later, however, when I spent an hour with him in more comfortable quarters, I modified my judgment a bit...
...Theodor Heuss, 65, the President of the Republic...
...Moreover, it is impossible for a touring foreigner like myself to distinguish accurately between mere grumbling over rations and taxes and the real thing—determination to throw the rascals out...
...When it gets specific on a matter so important as socialized medicine, the Tories' "We wuz robbed" is even more doleful, for the Conservatives regard themselves as the founders of the program...
...the third a professor of medieval art, and the last, visiting professor of philosophy...
...There are able and energetic young men on the lower rungs of the party ladder, but the shadow cast by those on the top keeps them pretty well obscured...
...Our over-all policy has changed for the better, but it is too early to tell if we started too late...
...The documentation has consisted of facsimile photographs of the covers of current German magazines featuring the countenances of the departed Nazi leaders...
...Mostly they sit in Frankfort and cover the American administration of our zone, but make little effort to find out how Germans think and feel and what Germany herself is up to...
...Some Germans whose integrity I •greatly respect told me that information on much of what was done to minorities in^the savagely-run concentration camps was never available to the average German...
...They are half-gentlemanly now," he said...
...If you're hunting for evidence of a resurgent nationalism and a neo-Nazism, you'll find it...
...My German is atrocious, but it did help me out of occasional difficulties...
...But many industries in all the countries have been artificially protected for years...
...Often what they have to report about the discovery of a pocket of neo-fascism in Bavaria or Hesse is true enough as far as it goes, but presents a totally distorted picture because of the complete omission of all mention of hopeful and constructive trends in the same or a nearby community...
...It was this problem which I found most potentially explosive in Germany...
...I wasn't primarily concerned with what the trade calls spot news, but by some lucky shuffle of the cards I found myself with a front-row seat for historic debates and decisions in Paris, Bonn, Berlin, and London...
...Actually, I detected a feeling as I wandered about that Europeans are on the whole more relieved than distressed by the news that the Russians have developed the atomic bomb...
...The cost of living in Germany seemed high to me...
...XIV The Soviet Union is playing a more cautious game in Europe than she had been, partly because of the mouth-full she has with China and the belly-full she has with Yugoslavia...
...The latter have complete control over the members they send to Bonn, for the members are bound by instructions from the state governments and are subject to removal by them at any time...
...Its alliance with the CDU has given it the Presidency of the Republic, and three major posts in the Cabinet...
...When they were informed by a waiter that the session was about to resume, the Social Democrats declined to return...
...A leader of the German Communists several decades ago, Reuter is now a passionate foe of the Soviets and is high on their list of Public Enemies...
...I talked to nearly a score of leading Laborites on the subject...
...Thus, there have been only two Foreign Ministers since the Liberation—Georges Bidault, now Premier, and Robert Schuman...
...I asked him how true it was that his vaunted internationalism consisted of nothing more than a capitalistic alliance between the French banks and the German cartels...
...Some of those who sit immobilized in Frankfort actually have no choice, because their papers or agencies want them to concentrate exclusively on what Americans are doing in Germany and not what the Germans are doing...
...Although Attlee's position as party leader is firm and fixed, there are personality conflicts within the Cabinet...
...Far from it...
...It has a smoothly-functioning propaganda machine which distributes more material more widely than any other party...
...In some cases, to escape complete bafflement, I found myself falling back on the prejudices I brought with me...
...Political bigamy is neither unusual nor immoral in France...
...He is intensely loyal to his party, and years of work on party and public welfare committees have given him the kind of training which enables him to preside effectively at Cabinet meetings...
...They think the moral is fairly obvious...
...If there were one common denominator, it was a sort of wistful longing for something resembling a New Deal or Fair Deal or a middle-of-the-road Welfare State, which would protect them from a world they find too complex and baffling to comprehend, but which would not tamper with their fiercely-held devotion to freedom...
...His foes say it was less a disinclination to capture power that way than great political ineptness if not downright stupidity...
...My own impression—it is not quite a conviction—is that they will if we of the victorious Allies help and encourage the truly democratic forces in Germany...
...When I saw him first from the press gallery of the Bundestag during the historic all-night brawl, he seemed tired, embittered, and in great pain...
...Ludwig Erhard, Minister of Economics, a chubby, cheery, able spokesman for free enterprise and free trade...
...The domestic program of the Gaullists is twofold...
...This would be roughly the equivalent of 20,000,000 unemployed in the United States...
...Two well-informed Americans in Paris separately expressed the same concern to me...
...L'Humanite, Paris organ of the Communists, sneered over the attempted "Coca-colonization" of France...
...Is this it...
...They can afford no posters, and they have only one newspaper—a two-page job...
...I was in Frankfort when the Middleton articles appeared in the international edition of the Times...
...As we sat in the Bundeshaus restaurant we were constantly interrupted by deputies who came to offer their congratulations to him...
...On the contrary, rather than free enterprise America hurting the Social-Democratic cause, it was Socialist Britain, through Bevin, which cost us a million votes...
...Contrary to some of the awful nonsense published in this country, Britain is no more a police state than are we, for civil, political, and religious liberties are completely undisturbed and zealously guarded...
...It would be as honest to cite the photographs in the German magazines as evidence of renewed adoration of the Nazi hierarchy as it would be to accuse the New York Post of being pro-gangster because it carried a picture of Frank Costello on its front page, or Time of being pro-Soviet because it used a picture of Stalin on its cover...
...Hoffman . . . America has the power, if it will be patient, to impel Europe along the road to real integration . . . and to persuade Europe to take all the risks involved in quickly creating a free market, if it will underwrite the venture...
...The greatest single factor in European politics today is the United States...
...Nor has there been time to develop in advance workable techniques for running the nationalized industries so as to assure efficient production, worker participation, and consumer protection at the same time...
...Consder for a moment that 48.000.-000 persons live in the area of Western Germany which had 38,000.000 before the war, and that in this about a third of the homes were destroyed...
...he exclaimed...
...Political leaders who had seemed from a distance to be the men who held the hope of France struck me in real life as too tired and trapped to be effective...
...They all reacted the same way...
...I cite him here because in this respect his reaction was typical of dozens of others in France and Germany...
...Yet its votes are decisive...
...It is a sad fact that democracy always comes to Germany in the wake of defeat when there is great difficulty for it to take root and survive...
...It was to attempt to assess the mood of the people, the governed as well as the governors...
...Its anti-cartel program will be unveiled shortly, but whether it will be a genuine effort to grapple with the problem, or a resort to mere subterfuge remains to be seen...
...There is a considerable resentment at the ease with which builders of mercantile establishments and government structures obtain materials while housing lags far behind...
...The distribution of postwar economic gains has been uneven and inequitable...
...There was a moment, though, when the whole thing could have been settled smoothly and face saved by both sides...
...Perhaps there is nothing intrinsically bad about coalition government, especially in a period of groping transition and reconstruction...
...Mollet's mood was reflected in his answer to another question: "How well will the Socialists do if there is an election soon...
...These were some of the officials and experts I consulted...
...The intensity of my experience is another matter...
...Few American reporters on the scene seemed to me interested in presenting a balanced report of developments in Germany...
...Still, the gambler in me demands a prophecy: Labor will win by a greatly diminished majority than it commanded in 1945, perhaps a majority so uncomfortably bare as to make decisive action difficult if not impossible...
...Many of those with whom I talked have more doubts than their oppo-sites here at home, but their general conclusion is that while there are great risks involved in such a course, the greater risk would be failure to rearm under the program we have proposed...
...My most noticeable facial feature is the map of Jerusalem...
...In the vast field of social services the Conservatives not only decline to advocate fundamental change, but they accuse the Socialists of stealing their stuff...
...Looking out into the hemicycle of the Chamber at his supporters, he told them they were "condemned to remain together...
...And one German, who knows America well and served the Allied cause for two years, said that while the comparison was not wholly fair, he would say that the "average" German reacted to available information about the cruelties of Hitlerism much as the "average" American responds to news reports of lynch-ings in the South or other forms of racial bigotry and discrimination...
...A whole generation may be required before a completely new outlook can be developed, but a start has been made...
...There was and perhaps there still is a great desire to punish, humiliate, and weaken Germany...
...However, they were allotted 15 seats in the Bundestag on the basis of modified proportional representation...
...It is doubtful, however, that SPD could have assumed power even if it had emerged as the strongest party, for it would have been without a majority...
...Raymond Aron, brilliant editorialist for Le Figaro, a leading French daily, did a crisp job of summing up the difficulties for me: "The United States of Europe is a noble concept, but I don't think it can be realized quickly or easily...
...his minister of economics, Ludwin Erhard...
...Aron concluded...
...GERMANY It is easy to find almost anything you are looking for in Germany— except perhaps something resembling objective truth...
...XII This whole problem of exacting conditions as a quid pro quo for economic assistance is a terribly touchy and perplexing one, no matter how sublime may be the goals which the conditions are intended to achieve...
...Still, the Germans argue, and with more than a little reason, some of the peacetime destruction of factories was carried out less to prevent a recurrence of war production than to weaken the German competitive position vis-a-vis the British...
...The expellees are largely Germans—men, women, and children who were kicked out of the countries of Eastern Europe, or uprooted from their homes in slices of the old Reich acquired by Russia and Poland, or refugees who have fled from the Soviet Zone of divided Germany...
...The Times carried a greatly reduced version of the report and buried it deep inside...
...Being honest men for the most part, they are less sure of themselves now than when they embarked on the Great Adventure in 1945...
...Schumann told me that the only basic difference between his wing of the MRP and the Socialists revolved around the historic conflict of public support of parochial schools—an interpretation which was confirmed almost completely by Guy Mollet, secretary-general of the Socialist Party when I saw him later in the week...
...Bitter poverty is widespread...
...A little later a prominent Social Democratic deputy demanded to know of Adenauer if he were the Chancellor of the German people...
...The second group was composed of foreigners, Americans and British, who were furious because there were more and better food and goods available in Germany than in Britain...
...Many of these ex-officers have no means, no homes, no position, no security now...
...Another factor is the wage freeze sought and received by the Government from organized labor...
...The Socialists have 92 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, only one-half the Communist representation and about 15% of the total membership...
...Churchill, now 75, declines to step aside...
...There are nearly 265,000 unemployed of a total labor force of 900,000 in the West Berlin population of 2,200,-000...
...On the political level they propose sweeping constitutional reforms designed to make government more efficient by striking at the multi-party system and by greatly increasing the powers of the President of the Republic...
...How the Parties Divide The West German State is organized as a federal republic, somewhat similar to ours, but reserving for the nine state governments greater residual powers than under the U.S...
...Most of the keenest minds I encountered in Europe, whether they embraced socialism, free enterprise, or Catholic centrism, agreed that nothing could more quickly destroy the hope of peace, orderly reconstruction, and the preservation of democracy than an American depression and its inevitable accompaniment—partial or total U. S. withdrawal from the affairs of Europe...
...But the tragic fact persists that the coalition is so completely negative in character that it is virtually paralyzed when it tries to move, as move it must, into the arena of affirmative action...
...There has been growing pressure for dissolution of the Chamber, much of it vocally from both the Gaullists and the Communists, who have nothing whatever in common except their hatred of the present coalition...
...Germany and the other countries of Europe are helpless because the issue belongs exclusively to the United States and Russia...
...Or if we reduce the problem to the functional economic level, as your Mr...
...He told me that while he felt that there had been American interference in the internal politics of Germany, especially during the military administration which preceded Mc-Cloy's appointment, there was no American meddling whatever in the August elections...
...IX Soustelle, one of Gen...
...professors and students...
...This over-all performance, resulting in countless thousands of jobs and creature necessities, has undoubtedly proved decisive in preventing the chaos and misery on which Communism thrives...
...This ex-officer group is anxious to revive its old way of life...
...The German desire for unification of the Soviet-occupied Eastern Zone and West Germany is great and is one of the central, if not the central, issues in German politics today," Schumacher emphasized...
...He and his 14 cohorts in the Bundestag jeer raucously at the parliamentary proceedings, but cut no ice whatever in legislative and political affairs...
...We are much more like your moderate Democrats...
...Moreover, nearly all of the by-elections occurred in districts which are ne evenly divided, but rather are traditionally pro-Labor...
...If the German Government proves unequal to the task of providing them with some slight measure of hope and opportunity, and if the victorious Western Allies persist in regarding them as a purely "German problem," the expellees may one day be organized by unscrupulous demagogues behind a war program of redeeming their old lands and homes...
...The expellees could be dynamite...
...But I did do it the hard way, much to the amusement and amazement of some of the more sophisticated correspondents...
...In my lectures," Martin reported, "I always get cheers from my audience when I tell them that we want neither to be occupied by the Russians and liberated by American atomic bombs, nor to be occupied by the Americans and liberated by Russian atomic bombs...
...The state governments and the national government of Western Germany have established special ministries to wrestle with this staggering problem...
...Mostly, however, I relied on interpreters and the comforting number of Germans in all walks of life whose English was vastly better than my German...
...The Communists understand this basic fact well...
...The Conservatives, as I reported above, are not inclined to view with too much alarm, and the Laborites, I suspect, are not in a mood to point with too much pride...
...The result added up the same way...
...Now Germany is democratic and they are poor...
...The political situation—about which more in a moment—is chaotic and desperate...
...The Labor Party leadership shows the bruises of four and a half years of power and the five years of war that went before...
...But the appearance of bland mediocrity is deceptive, for he is known to be a shrewd politician and skillful strategist...
...and a great number of editors and correspondents (German, British, and American...
...Anyone could wander in and out...
...The Socialists feel greatly ill-at-ease in the coalition, as well they might, for its record up to now bears little if any resemblance to the platform of the Socialist Party...
...Healthy tendencies toward development of a liberal spirit" far outweigh "those of re-nazification and nationalism...
...In this connection, Pastor Martin Niemoeller, the famed Protestant leader whom I visited in Wiesbaden, touched off an explosion in Germany the other day when he said that the Germans would rather take the risk of living under a Communist dictatorship than continue with the present division of Germany into two governments—one controlled by the Communists in the East, the other by the Big Three in the West...
...Some of . it is now on display among Johnny-come-latelys, largely because of the Kremlin's break with Tito...
...But a few days later, in Berlin, I lunched with a friend of his and mine, an American Jew who occupies a highly responsible post in Germany and knows the country well...
...It was dismantled by the Allies after the war was over...
...High Com* missioner John J. McCloy is hopeful that there is still time...
...Heine, who escaped to Britain during the war and worked with Allied agencies, estimated that 20% of the population are convinced democrats, that 15 to 20% are convinced nationalists with varying degrees of devotion to totalitarianism, and that the remaining 60 to 65% are presently ideological floaters, not greatly interested in politics but buried deep in their own urgent personal and family needs...
...The leaders are provincial characters, with little ability for writing, organizing, and propaganda...
...I went first to Frankfort, headquarters of the American occupation, where I tarried only a day and a half before realizing that what I was after must be sought elsewhere...
...Mainly the stories were cheap sensationalism which did...
...That does it for me...
...He was the only politician with whom I talked in France who made no extravagant claims of great gains to come...
...And there still remains a fairly considerable area in which I feel totally unqualified to pontificate...
...I only know I was never conscious of it among the Germans I met...
...These refugees from totalitarian terror, some of whom are Jews and many not, have become a law unto themselves in their camps where they await removal to other countries...
...The task of governing Berlin is enormously complicated...
...The results, are not impressive...
...The complainants have a point...
...By and large, the German people never shared Hitler's hatreds, but they were helpless to do anything effective against the extreme measures taken by the Nazis...
...23, with the national election...
...In that year it captured 38% of the vote...
...The Catholic-dominated MOUVE-MENT REPU BLICAINE POP-ULAIRE is the dominating force in the ruling coalition...
...The risk of letting the present drift to disaster continue is greater than the risk of de Gaulle's authoritarian manner...
...The Government for the first time was obliged to think of the relationship of a public control board in an industry not only to the Government, but to labor and consumers...
...As I headed away from Germany I tried to sort out some of my impressions...
...Many of the non-Jewish Germans I see have told me they more or less went along with the wave of anti-Semitism...
...Safety in the mines has been greatly improved...
...Perhaps those who feel it have become skilled in the art of concealment...
...Obviously a major factor in this improvement has been the two billion dollars worth of food, animal feed, and farm machinery we have poured into Western Europe under the Marshall Plan...
...Don't let them trick you into looking and sounding like them...
...But Americans are deluding themselves if they don't recognize the limitations of the plan and don't face up to the fact that unless we use our influence to encourage basic improvements in France, we shall have engaged in little more than a temporary holding operation...
...He conceded that prices are still too high and wages much too low, but he expressed confidence that more competition, more free enterprise, and more free trade with other countries would drive prices down and thus increase real wages...
...Taxation has been terrific in Socialist Britain...
...He told me that an announcement would soon be made of a reconciliation between Adenauer and Schumacher which would lead to revocation of the 20-day suspension penalty...
...in 1949 its proportion in the national election was 31...
...I work with many groups of young people, Jews and non-Jews," Putzrath said...
...Everywhere I went people seemed, greatly preoccupied with their own, immediate problems and had little time to read or talk about domestic or world politics...
...The presence of the portrait was more reminiscent of the past than representative of the present, for French Socialists in the main seemed to me to have wandered far from their old Marxist moorings...
...His German political foes and some American observers with whom I talked felt he was a crafty, cunning, tricky, ruthless manipulator whose word could not be trusted...
...Are you kidding...
...Heine explained that by Nationalist he meant a composite of arrogance, chauvinism, and aggressive qualities which flout minority rights, reject international cooperation, embrace anti-Semitism in one form or another, and are definitely expansionist-minded...
...Totally responsive to the Moscow line, it hammers relentlessly at the peril of Wall Street enslavement of France and makes French Socialists, rather than conservatives, the target of its ugliest vituperation...
...Entrance was simple...
...One was the dean of a leading university law school...
...Obviously, the Right wing of the MRP would not go all the way with Schumann...
...The question didn't seem to anger them...
...They are tired, disillusioned, and just don't give a damn...
...Heuss himself never supported the Nazis, and his book, Hitler's Weg, which appeared shortly before the Nazis came to power, was burned by them in 1933...
...The Social Democrats, led by Kurt Schumacher, were critical of Adenauer because they felt he 1) had made too many concessions to the Allies...
...Public morale—or more accurately, that tiny segment of the public whose pulse I was able to take—is distressingly low, and understandably...
...Many Frenchmen complain that foreigners, especially Americans, take perverse pleasure in lampooning French politics by exaggerating the significance of the recurring "crises" in the Government...
...My second reason is based on a most informal and unscientific sampling of public opinion, which included off-the-record talks with Labor Party officials, casual chats with strangers, pumping of British and American newspaper men, and conversations with Conservatives...
...Soustelle minced no words in his appraisal of official American reaction to the de Gaulle party and program...
...But...
...But I soon discovered that both are open to the public, whether for a beer or a full-course dinner...
...The Conservatives, with Churchill playing a leading role, have taken the stump in favor of a united Europe, but the Labor crowd dismisses this Tory behavior as escapism and a device to quit the Labor Party program...
...They do not show the vital intangibles of life and living...
...Would the workers stand for even a three-months layoff during the period of readjustment...
...When they arrived in Western Germany, bitter, bankrupt, and completely lacking in any kind of hope for the future, they were herded into improvised shelters or old army barracks and concentration camps, where they live, often eight to a dozen in a room, in indescribable squalor...
...and a number of talks with SPD deputies and lesser officials...
...I have encountered a surprising and encouraging readiness to make a fresh start...
...What France needs is something approximating your New Deal under Roosevelt, or your Fair Deal under Truman...
...The devastated city is split into four sectors...
...In Berlin, Mayor Reuter told me that the attitude of Russian soldiers in the Soviet sector had changed greatly in recent months...
...Churchill once called Attlee a "sheep in wolf's clothing...
...Moreover, we don't endear ourselves to the Europeans by laying down the law to them...
...France is far from healthy today, despite all the impressive production charts handed around to inquiring reporters...
...Many of them were given only a few hours' notice to evacuate their homes and move westward to what was for them an alien land...
...Food is vastly more plentiful than it would have been had there been no Marshall Plan...
...The Right parties, of course, have wealthy angels in business and industry...
...number two man in the SPD and vice president of the Bundestag...
...But— and here we come to the first of a series of "buts" on the Marshall Plan—the unequal distribution of the fruits of the program has provided political ammunition for the Communists, especially in a country like France...
...Perhaps I was too excited about what I was doing to notice...
...The SPD's dominating personality is Dr...
...Many are tired and lacking in fire and spirit...
...He met most of my questions head-on...
...Kingsley Martin, editor of Britain's Left-wing New Statesman and Nation, thought the Marshall Plan has had extremely beneficial results, but he would like it better, he added, "if the Americans were more honest with themselves and recognized the fact that the Marshall Plan has probably prevented a serious recession or depression in the United States...
...Bedlam broke out on the floor...
...McCloy told me as we compared notes just before I boarded the Orient Express for Paris...
...Outrageous nonsense," he exploded...
...It is strongest in rural areas and among the women, and it draws decisive support from churches, especially the Catholic Church...
...I encountered none...
...The Communists have been losing ground steadily...
...Completely irresponsible, it doubles and quadruples the pledges made by the other parties...
...He had seen the things which, unhappily, don't make head' lines because they are affirmative and hopeful...
...One of the highest-placed Labor leaders put it to me this way: "After all we had to break completely new ground, and sometimes, unhappily, we had to proceed in hit-or-miss fashion...
...CONCLUSION I have by-passed most problems of foreign affairs up to now in favor of merging my impressions of the policies of the three countries in this final chapter...
...One aspect of this program is especially noteworthy—the emphasis on infant and child health...
...Consider, too, that just about every West German locality was having trouble enough of its own, what with the desperate shortages of food, clothing, jobs, and homes, before they were obliged to open their gates to the more than 9,000,-000 refugees dumped in their midst...
...This judgment springs from the fact that the SPD has demanded more concessions from the Allies, especially in the matter of dismantling German industry, relaxing some of the occupation restrictions, and liberalizing the Ruhr Statute...
...Democracy, as we know it, is not firmly established, but the direction is right even if the pace is slow...
...Later that week, when I was in Frankfort preparatory to leaving for Berlin, I learned from high American officials that they had called von Brentano to U.S...
...I gathered that von Brentano had played a part in developing the face-saving formula for both sides...
...He had seen what Middleton had seen, but he had seen a great deal more...
...Electricity is being produced at twice the pre-war rate...
...The immediate and pragmatic test comes Feb...
...Anti-Semitism is not so deeply or widely felt in postwar Germany as I feared it might be...
...Others feel that their editors and publishers don't want anything warm and friendly written about the Germans...
...He, too, had been in Munich recently, and for a much longer time than Middle-ton...
...Maurice Schumann, who was president of MRP a year or two ago, was sharply critical of unequal distribution of wealth in the post-liberation period...
...Martin Niemoeller, John J. McCloy, U.S...
...My third reason is the Conservative Party's position and personalities...
...In London, Kingsley Martin, who has long felt that it was possible to work amicably with the Soviet Union, summed it up in a few words at lunch one day: "If Tito can't get along with Stalin, how can I?" Martin believes in leaving all doors open for negotiations with the Russians, but he doesn't expect sensational results soon...
...Millions of new units are needed, but the Government has announced it can sponsor "the building of only 250,000 units this year...
...I took a train to the university town of Bonn, new capital of the West German Republic, where quite by accident I arrived for the historic conference at which the Big Three negotiated a new settlement with the Germans, and the dramatic debate that ensued between the Government and the Social Democrats...
...Expectant mothers, regardless of family income, receive free everything they require in the way of food, medicine, and care to assure as easy a delivery and as healthy an infant as medical science can provide...
...Integration means the rationalization of industry...
...The first election for the new republic was held in August, 1949...
...And yet it does not figure prominently in much of the correspondence published in the press of this country...
...The Progressive has deait at length with many of them during the past year in articles by George Orwell, Morgan Phillips, David Bruce, Norman Mackenzie, David Williams, and C. L. Graebner...
...The country is now asleep because the people have little or nil stake...
...Still, it lost relatively compared to its 1947 pulling power in the state elections...
...After two days, I returned to Frankfort, hired a German car and driver, and headed for Wiesbaden, then up the Rhine to Coblentz, Maintz, Bonn again, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, and Bochum...
...There is another example worth recording here...
...Parliament is composed of two branches—the Bundestag, elected by universal suffrage, and the Bundesrat, composed of members selected by the state governments...
...But in terms of the long-haul of history, the test of Labor Government pioneering and experimentation will come after the shakedown period ends and other nations borrow and reject British-developed procedures on the basis of their performance in action...
...They feel, too, that the dismantling program pursued in the British Zone was needlessly and maliciously harsh, and they felt this all the more because Labor is in power in Britain...
...Housing is desperately bad...
...One final note on the Gaullists: I encountered in Paris several first-rate intellectuals with an impeccable reputation for devotion to democracy who are in a mood to string along with Gen...
...Still, private industry, which now represents 80% of the British economy, does much more handsomely than its laments would indicate...
...That wasn't destroyed by bombs," he said with great bitterness...
...On economic issues, however, the FDP is closely aligned with the conservative wing of CDU...
...I want to avoid in this fragment on Britain any prolonged analysty of statistical data or specific programs...
...He was equally outraged when I asked him if he cared to reply to opposition charges that he was a cold-blooded reactionary bent on returning economic power to the Ruhr cartels...
...This business of listening to both sides can be a terribly disconcerting experience...
...VIII The present Chamber of Deputies and the Bidault regime it tolerates by a fragile majority serve by law until 1951—unless dissolved sooner in favor of new elections...
...What government could survive the initial dislocations of a program to rationalize European industry...
...Although he is widely regarded as a friend of the cartel system, Erhard told me, with some vehemence, that be believes strongly in decarteliza-tion because he is convinced that if the Government falls down on this assignment, the inevitable next step would be collectivization—which he dreads...
...In addition, there are countless former merchants and small industrialists who have been reduced to the role of unskilled workers on very low wages...
...Nobody, except the Communists in all countries, thinks the United States has any aggressive design...
...Tax rebates, about which little is said or printed, are substantial, and undistributed profits have been permitted to pile up in corporation coffers at a great rate...
...He is a Jew who fled the Hitler terror but returned when the war was over...
...In some areas its base is militantly democratic...
...2) had failed to consult parliamentary leaders during the negotiations...
...There is a hard-to-pin-down feeling that perhaps they have gone too far too fast...
...Obviously my half-hour session with him hardly qualifies me to accept or reject that appraisal of the man...
...So great is the boldness of a few of these black-marketing DP's, this correspondent told me, that they are suspected of attempting to bribe American occupation officials...
...Britain has subjected herself to extraordinary sacrifices and undergone unparalleled austerity in her effort to achieve a planned economy with equal shares for all...
...Many of those involved are not Jews, but DP has become synonymous with Jew, and my publisher wouldn't stand for it...
...He insisted Germany does not want an army of her own, but would like to be represented in a Western European force if and when it becomes a reality...
...We had to proceed, because some of the industries were dying on their feet...
...But if the counsel of the high and low in France, Germany, and England adds up to anything, it adds up to this: "Take it easy...
...Among the spokesmen for labor I consulted were Georg Reuter, vice president of the German Federation of Labor, and Hans Jahn, president of the Railway Workers Union...
...The RASSEMBLEMENT POP-ULAIRE FRANCAIS (RPF) of Gen...
...The first consisted of conservative Germans who gloated aloud that free-enterprise Germany had achieved greater economic recovery than Socialist Britain...
...It will take extraordinary skill and patience to guide American foreign policy during the months and years just ahead...
...This would be hard to exaggerate...
...The three principal parties of the coalition are the Catholic-dominated MRP, the party of Bidault, Schuman, and Schumann...
...Nor is this their only concern...
...The well-fixed are eating much better in Germany than in Britain...
...I had the perfect schedule, which was no fixed schedule at all...
...Two or three years ago there was actually a pronounced pro-Semitic feeling in Germany, which was part of the national guilty conscience, although many of the Germans had had nothing to do with anti-Semitic measures themselves...
...He was more relaxed and human and spoke with less harshness...
...Many Germans lost heart...
...Stampeded by the commotion of the politically immature deputies, he stopped the proceedings, and with what seemed like phony solemnity, recessed the session and sent the Committee on Discipline, known as the Council of Elders, into a special meeting to decide how Schumacher should be punished...
...I was there 16 days —too short a period to study so vast a problem and so complex a people...
...II After adding and subtracting a wide assortment of experiences, the net result of my over-all impression was definitely affirmative and hopeful...
...On the economic level the Gaullists propose an arrangement which smells faintly of the corporative state...
...Are we now to be asked to sacrifice these years of work and privation by having our economy scrambled together with the grossly inequitable systems on the continent...
...The RPF has set up a great cry for a new election in the immediate future...
...I have been asked how popular is the Marshall Plan among the people and whether they feel grateful...
...Thus the grand total came to 7,790,733, or some 400,000 more than the CDU-CSU...
...The staffs at the various party suites were friendly and responsive, not only to a foreign journalist like myself, but to the scores of constituents who came seeking passes for the sessions, interviews with deputies, or other favors...
...A number of regional parties elected small delegations to the Bundestag...
...Schmid expressed even greater concern than had Schumacher over the "infiltration of the Adenauer Government by leading former Nazis...
...I asked the correspondent when he thought he would have the story well enough in hand to send to his paper...
...Unfortunately, under the way ECA has operated in practice, we have not one international plan for Europe, but 16 different plans, one for each of the Marshall Plan recipients...
...In the first place, Labor has not lost a single one of the three dozen by-elections, resulting from death or resignation, since it won power nationally in 1945...
...This site-ation is hardening fast...
...He urged me to take home a warning to America not to identify itself too closely with the Adenauer regime, for, "In the long run it will hurt American prestige in Germany...
...There is a substantial possibility that de Gaulle would produce a very real reform in the present multi-party class which produces recurring political crises, corrodes the faith of the people in democracy, and weakens France as a nation...
...And yet I would have welcomed a greater willingness to discuss the subject frankly...
...and 3) the checking of westward expansion on the continent by the Soviet Union...
...They are convinced they lost a million votes in the election as a result of a speech by Britain's Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, a Laborite, defending the continuance of dismantling, just before the August polling in Germany...
...Some Americans I encountered in Europe, and some Europeans, too, were furious because the United States was not demanding certain internal reforms and European consolidation as a price for ERP aid, but American officials who run the Marhall Plan and European, politicians who would have to act on such demands as we might make insisted that the practice was infinitely more difficult than the theory...
...But first a word about my itinerary in Germany...
...Such a program, avoiding the dangers of nationalization, would vastly increase the productivity ol France...
...Leaning over the rail from my front-row press gallery seat, I recorded the anticipated response of the Bundestag—cheers from the Right and Center, silence from the Social Democrats, and hoots of derision from the Communists...
...The Bundestag reconvened without them and accepted the Council's judgment that Schumacher be suspended for 20 legislative days —an extraordinarily harsh penalty...
...For I did try to ventilate my mind as I sought out people on both sides of controversial issues...
...At present, however, there are no links connecting the various local groups...
...But you cannot argue away the fact that the Labor Party has performed precisely as it said it would when it went to the people and asked for their votes...
...The foreign press played up the story and carried "I-told-you-so" editorials emphasizing the German lack of capacity for self-government...
...The whole episode intensified inter-party bitterness and threatened the stability of the infant republic...
...Thus, the Tories formally note in their Declaration of Policy that "the Socialists in the last four years have carried out in a partisan spirit the plans prepared by the National Coalition Government and its large Conservative majority...
...What are the prospects for peace or war in Europe...
...The SPD, whose anti-Nazism was more widespread and persistent perhaps than that of any other party, is criticized today in some quarters for showing an occasional streak of "nationalism...
...Mostly the Germans I encountered ranged from formally courteous to pleasant and helpful...
...That is why the SPD and the labor movement are insisting so urgently on the need for nationalization as the alternative to cartelization...
...A solid citizen of great charm and education, Heuss is widely respected by men and women in all political camps...
...When I asked Mollet if I was right in assuming, from my meager observation, that the party's leadership was oldish, weary, and frustrated, he conceded I might have a point...
...It is strong, too, among the many thousands of ex-officers of the German Army who know nothing except how to command people and live well...
...The Socialists are expected to confront the problem head-on at their next conference...
...The Night of Nov...
...For I did have a fixed mission...
...I have learned through the years to spot anti-Semitism, however unspoken...
...They idolize him as an almost legendary war leader, but they don't think he has the outlook or the equipment to lead in peacetime...
...The latter, in fact, belongs to the faction of MRP which feels a rather close kinship to the Socialist Party...
...The FDP believes in unvarnished free enterprise...
...Instead of the present concept of workers on one side and ownership on the other, there would be new legislation encouraging the creation of corporations in which the workers and the capitalists would be associated in sharing the productive capacity of their joint enterprise...
...The conservative wings of the middle or center parties are everywhere in the ascendancy, Mollett pointed out, citing as one example the case of the French Liberals—one of the four partners in the coalition—who once favored a direct alliance with the Socialists but now shun it...
...EUROPE IN 1950 By MORRIS H. RUBIN THE title of this political travelogue is" somewhat more expansive than the actual itinerary of my 14,000-mile swing through only three countries—France, Germany, and England...
...De Gaulle, whose integrity is beyond reproach, provides some hope for a cleansing of France's political system...
...The wheels of production have been lubricated to a remarkable degree so that now output in most countries exceeds the prewar totals...
...III Putzrath felt that decisive improvement on the social and economic fronts would go far toward eliminating many of these tensions, but that the answer to the much more elusive emotional factor was nowhere in sight...
...Robert Muenser, manager of the Buchumer Verein, one of the largest steel establishments in Europe...
...Standing between its Right-wing partner, the Radical Socialists, and its Left-wing partner, the Socialists, it has steered a precarious course down the middle...
...The articles told a grim story of re-nazification, and they were splashed on the front page of the Times, the most influential daily we have...
...A tall, gaunt figure, with but one arm and one leg, the Social Democratic leader is often in great pain and can move only with much help and difficulty...
...I think 1 would have mistrusted an obsequious wringing of hands and a great display of sackcloth and ashes...
...Everyone thought there must be a way to get along with them, but nobody quite knew how to proceed...
...Carlo Schmid, a big, burly, jovial French-born German, is the acknowledged Number Two man of the SPD...
...Henri Queuille, who served a stint as Premier of France last summer, summed it all up with brutal realism one day...
...While they were unwilling to belabor the point to a foreigner, they indicated clearly enough that America had shown more friendliness to conservative forces in Germany than to their own party...
...Moreover, another difficulty for the Socialists in the coalition, Mollet explained, is the Righward trend in the "bourgeoise parties" of France, as in all Europe...
...This is the gnawing fear in Western Europe today—that they are helpless in a struggle between the U. S. and the U.S.S.R., in which they have no voice, and that unless the conflict can be resolved, they will be the cannon fodder and their countries will be the battleground...
...Still, this could make the RPF the largest single party in the Chamber, and there is a considerable possibility that the conservative Radical Socialist Party, which has long been restive in its forced embrace of the MRP and the Socialists, would decide to enter into a coalition with de Gaulle...
...The President, whose role is akin to that of a king in a constitutional monarchy like England or Sweden, has served as his country's conscience, reminding his fellow citizens that they must cleanse themselves of their Nazism if they are to be deserving of democracy...
...The only over-all generalization I brought back is a healthy distrust of all generalizations about Europe, or of the three countries I visited...
...The idea of an alliance with "the Communists is abhorrent to the SPD, whose leaders have been burnt badly in Popular Front deals in the past...
...that's about all...
...In the interest of tidiness and convenience I have divided what follows into four compartments—one for each of the three countries, though not in the chronological order in which I visited them, and a final one for rash and tentative stock-taking...
...While I was in Paris, Lionel Durand, the able foreign editor of Paris Presse, compiled some editorial comments on this very point out of the stack of newspapers on his desk...
...Leader of the West German Communists is Max Reimann, a good-looking, likable person who drives a big limousine and generally enjoys the luxuries of the capitalism he hates...
...Many anti-GauIIists who concede the General's honesty and courage insist he would be "far more dangerous if he were not so politically dumb...
...One correspondent told me of some hair-raising developments in the DP camp in Frankfort...
...There are nine to 12 million of them—nobody knows exactly how many...
...How do the people feel about it all now that they have it...
...Adenauer smote the table violently when I asked him a couple of questions based on critical comments by his political opponents...
...The man who runs an underground railroad to help German prisoners of the Russians told me that there is definite evidence of a moderating policy toward Germany...
...The composition of FDP is most uneven...
...He expressed grave concern that the Russians might strike westward sooner than later—this statement was quite obviously part of the shrewd German strategy to speed further concessions from the Big Three...
...M. Soustelle, de Gaulle's brain-truster, voiced the harshest judgment when he said the American position in France is declining, "partly because of the constant barrage of Communist propaganda against American Marshall Plan imperialism, and partly because the French have developed a feeling that perhaps you are not so altruistic as you pretend, and that you are actually feathering your own nest while playing the role of Santa Claus...
...For I did manage to squeeze a prodigious amount of listening and looking into each of my 40 days...
...The Chancellor jumped to his feet to announce that a press dispatch which had just come in over the news ticker in the chamber quoted Hans Boeckler, president of the German Federation of Labor, as approving the very provisions which Schumacher had denounced...
...Some of the SPD spokesmen with whom I talked felt they had been let down by both the United States and Britain...
...His conclusion was emphatic—anyone reading the Middleton articles would have a totally one-sided picture of what was happening in Bavaria...
...He is widely regarded as authoritarian—not totalitarian—and some members of his own party complain that he is prone to act on decisive issues without consulting the Bundestag or his own associates in the chamber...
...The Socialists exist on the modest dues of their 180,000 members...
...High taxes and the fear of nationalization have cut incentives for private investment, without a doubt, but not nearly so much as sometimes claimed by the more reckless critics of the Labor Government...
...They tell a story of fluctuating gains, recurring crises, rescue by American dollars, and a slow, steady climb from the depths...
...Even a drone can become a royal bee if it sups on royal honey," he is supposed to have remarked...
...Some have become arrogant and corrupt and engage in extensive black-market operations...
...if the Germans are able to whip their most urgent problems—economic inequality, unemployment, the treatment of the 9,000,000 expellees who have crowded into Western Germany, and perhaps most baffling of all, their role in the struggle between the U.S...
...Some have said they had never actually seen a Jew, only Julius Stretcher's caricatures of them, and they were subsequently surprised to find they were as human as anyone else...
...Alliances with other conservative parties, notably the fast-growing Free Democratic Party, have enabled the CDU-CSU to dominate the Government...
...Take nationalization of basic industries...
...Thus, on the Government and conservative side, I saw the Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer...
...Hoffman does, we run into staggering difficulties...
...But Koehler did just the opposite...
...Meanwhile, the various parties had been caucusing...
...Schumacher was unsparing in his denunciation of Chancellor Adenauer...
...I met and liked and traveled a bit with Drew Middle-ton, the chief correspondent in Germany for the New York Times...
...The German people are working hard at reconstruction...
...and the U.S.S.R...
...He asked me to make a note of the fact that in recent talks with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and U. S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy, he and his SPD associates had been treated with dignity and consideration—"much more than we get from our own Government...
...They do not show that folks generally are feeling and looking better than they have in a long time...
...The Communists are forever denouncing us for 'selling out' to the Right, and we find it increasingly difficult to get the workers to understand the fundamental fact that withdrawal from the coalition would mean the collapse of the Government, with the resulting probability of political chaos which would play into the hands of the extremists and perhaps bring about the fall of the Republic...
...3, has been in power for four and a half years...
...de Gaulle himself is not a fascist, in the commonly applied meaning of the word, and he and his lieutenants bitterly resent what they regard as a vicious distortion of their position in the world press...
...They think it equalizes things and makes war less likely...
...however, have the merit of revealing the feet of clay with which these gangsters strutted across history's stage...
...In Germany I had sessions with the leading representatives of the new Government and its Opposition...
...As politicians," said Mollet, "we have much to gain by going into opposition...
...The CDU-CSU is conservative and clerical...
...occupation troops...
...The scope of future nationalization will depend on events, experience, and the development of new techniques...
...Schumacher, I was told later over early-morning coffee, "could have bitten off his tongue the moment the words were out...
...Two days later I had breakfast with von Brentano, Adenauer's floorleader in the Bundestag...
...The wheels of production are being lubricated in part by the Marshall Plan, and food and clothing are vastly more abundant, I am told, than they were two years and a year ago...
...Only 38% were positive the program was good for the country...
...This is France—or rather the France I saw and heard...
...American authorities favor the preservation of the present system in France because it is a weak one and keeps France weak,' he insisted...
...The Germans realize they are in the middle of a global conflict, and that events may shape their destiny without their having anything to say about those events...
...He said he was flatly opposed to the withdrawal of U.S...
...Fate's entrapment of the Socialist Party is not its only weakness, although it is true that most of its other shortcomings flow from its damned-if-it-does and damned-if-it-doesn't position...
...Wolfgang Pohle, director of the Mannesman Tube Works...
...There are no statistics, of course, but one well-informed German, Frederick Heine, a Bundestag deputy and a member of the seven-member executive board of the Social Democratic Party, gave me a far-from-cheerful breakdown of his own impression of public opinion...
...As for the industries already nationalized—coal, gas and electricity, transport, the Bank of England, civil aviation, and several lesser ones— the Tories plan to "leave them nationalized, but we shall radically overhaul their organization to make them more human, less centralized, and more efficient...
...The workers have been caught between free and rising prices on the one hand and frozen and depressed wages on the other...
...He talked of Germany's justified demands and her right to press them before the Allied powers...
...Putzrath, who has made a special study of the whole problem of anti-Semitism in Germany and works closely with what remains of the Jewish community, said he was convinced that the foreign press greatly exaggerates each case of resurgent nationalism or anti-Semitism, however isolated or unrepresentative...
...His name is Heinz Putzrath, head of the Foreign Section of the Social Democratic Party...
...whether the German people can grow into them is the crucial question of the months and years just ahead...
...X Politically, nationalization will not be much of an issue in the approaching election campaign—except for iron and steel...
...Realists among the Labor Party strategists accept the fact that the rank-and-file of workers, who are the party's electoral backbone, are not bubbling with too much enthusiasm for nationalization...
...Number Two man in the Government is Dr...
...Soustelle, for instance, told me that he has no more use for American capitalism than for Russian Bolshevism...
...Your President Truman is driving down the middle of the road and achieving for the people of America what the people of France want most...
...Actually, if its strength in Berlin were counted—which it wasn't in the August election—it would be the largest...
...An exuberant believer in free competition and a relentless critic of any form of planned economy, Erhard is convinced that the vast improvement in the German economy during the past year flows directly from restoration of competition, removal of controls, stabilization of the currency—and the Marshall Plan...
...The original notion that socialism would be pretty much the extension of the old Post Office idea to a wider area has been outmoded by experience...
...His fear that Europe is trapped in the middle of a duel between the two giants was echoed again and again wherever I went...
...Moreover, the totally negative purpose which holds the coalition together—to prevent either the Communists or the Gaullists from taking power—is a wholesome enough goal in itself...
...The shops are full of goods—but not of people, for wages are low and prices high...
...We shall endeavor faithfully to maintain the range and scope of these Services, and the rates of benefits...
...I have more facts and fewer convictions than I had when I left...
...There was an angry chorus of replies from the Right and Center, a sharp jab or two from Adenauer, and then Schumacher's fateful taunt at Adenauer: "Chancellor of the Allies...
...For it has learned much, and it looks forward to the opportunity to reassess and reappraise what it has done, free from the tension and pressure of an approaching election...
...You of the victors are trapped by a schizophrenic mood regarding Germany," he remarked...
...The Ruhr industrialists who told me their stories included Hans Gun-ther Sohl, chairman of the United Steel Combine...
...Schumacher was furious as the rug was pulled from under him...
...I asked everyone I saw whether it were possible to work out some modus vivendi with the Russians...
...The production index is still under 30% of 1936, as compared with more than 90% in West Germany...
...His answer, in its own unpremeditated way, summed up the two salient facts about French Socialists today: their essential integrity and honesty, and their lack of hope and enthusiasm...
...This provision is the result of Allied insistence on a decentralized, relatively weak federal system...
...Dr...
...In other instances I was able to arrive at tentative judgments by taking up what I heard from the big shots with the scores of ordinary citizens I tried to pump...
...The results showed that a substantial number of Europeans are suspicious of American motives in operating the plan...
...Most of the public officials, union spokesmen, business men, and intellectuals with whom I talked expressed the warmest kind of reaction, but I heard little among the people generally...
...Charles de Gaulle actually has no members of the present National Assembly under its own designation...
...I have been asked this question dozens of times in the brief period since I returned...
...France, he said, liked the idea because it would weaken Germany...
...I asked him about the joyful mood...
...He had just returned from Munich where he had gathered material for a series of articles on the return of many Nazis to power in Bavaria...
...Britain and the U. S. were too long deluded over the prospect of a settlement of the German peace with Russia...
...Their argument, in composite form, runs this way: "It is impossible to plan for a Europe which is itself planless...
...My impression is that the Communists attract hundreds of thousands of votes from Frenchmen who have no stomach for either Marxism or Red imperialism, but who find in the Communist Party an outlet for the bitterness they feel over the raw deal they have had since the Liberation...
...As for the Soviet Union, I encountered an almost universal fear and mistrust of the Bear...
...If Labor wins the election, its great test will come when it seeks to apply the lessons it has learned in its first term in power...
...Which countries would give up which industries...
...in other words each country in the union produces what it is best equipped to make in the light of its resources, manpower, skills, and power supply...
...There has been some progress, notably in the removal of about half the quantitative restrictions which kept postwar trade at an alarmingly low level at first...
...Our present course," Mollet explained, "is much too defensive to have wide appeal among the workers, who want us to be much more aggressive...
...As Soustelle explained it, Association would not be compulsory, but would be encouraged by tax advantages for those who agree to participate in the program...
...FRANCE It is extraordinarily difficult for a visiting fireman like myself, endowed with an expense account, to learn much about France in the ever lovely and enchanting city of Paris...
...Treasury figures show that only 250 persons have an income of $14,000 a year after taxes...
...The reform of the currency more than a year ago has been a greatly stabilizing force in the German economy, but the adjustments are slow and painful...
...Whether Britain likes it or not, American Marshall Plan officials are exercising greater pressure for integration, or some modified form of unification...
...If you're out to find proof of democratic forces at work rebuilding a more hopeful Germany, you'll find that, too...
...The Communists with whom I talked claimed they would gain greatly if an election were held soon, but the most educated guesses I heard indicated that the CP would holds its own, or lose slightly...
...I hope Americans won't fall for the New York Times line that Adenauer is a great statesman now because he follows Allied orders without challenge," the SPD leader declared...
...It is American prosperity, American production, and American participation which are decisive in the 1) internal reconstruction of Western Europe...
...VI The Free Democratic Party (FDP) is far from being the second largest party, but I list it here because its affinity with the CDU makes it simpler to handle next...
...They remember they were well off when Germany was nationalistic...
...The MRP gets considerable support from its church connections...
...The unemployed, plus the pensioners and the invalids and their families who barely exist on substandard rations, are estimated at 37% of the total population...
...The Times could find no room up front in the paper for this official reply to its correspondent's colored treatment of the facts...
...He never tires of pointing out that he had an opportunity to seize power once, but pointedly avoided such a course...
...Adenauer triumphantly took the rostrum to report Boeckler's confirmation...
...Unlike the CDU, it has no place to turn for allies, unless it were to the Arnold faction of CDU, which is not strong enough to provide a working majority...
...It is wretchedly poor...
...they merely said that the race was extremely close and thought it almost a dead heat as of the day I spent in their headquarters in mid-Dec ember...
...Now, there is no challenging Middleton's data, I understand...
...In France, for instance, only four persons in every 100 questioned gave the Marshall Plan credit for speeding French recovery...
...The abandonment of sovereignty is a slow and precarious process...
...There is no love squandered between "Nye" Bevan, Minister of Health, and Ernest Bevin, Foreign Minister...
...I have no personal basis for comparison with a year or two years ago, but those who have told me that the accomplishments are enormously impressive, especially in view of the lack of modern tools and machinery...
...Reuter told me that even he, who knows how hard-working Germans can be, has been amazed at the industry of the Berliners—but for a pitifully small return...
...We may gain two seats or lose two seats...
...We are much further to the Left than your Republicans," the bright young men who are planning election strategy at Tory headquarters assured me...
...By one device or another I got to see a great majority of the people whose policies and personalities are decisive in the new Germany...
...This is all true enough, but it skirts clear, as Maurice Schumann readily agreed, of the fatal malady of French politics today—"coali-tionitis," or government by a group of parties held together by a common fear but no common hope...
...It is trapped in a political no-man's land—between its integrity and the demands of practical politics, between its sense of responsibility for keeping the Government going and its awareness that it is paying a high price in popular support for its present role...
...When individuals, or a collection of individuals known as a nation, realize they have no voice in the most important decision of their lives, it is difficult to build foith in the worthwhileness of a free, democratic government which is not free to respond to the wishes of the people...
...The FDP finished third in the August elections, but it was the only one of the four national parties to show both absolute and relative gains over the last state elections...
...There is a growing body of sentiment in the party that it should withdraw from the coalition if it fails to secure from the other parties of the partnership a number of basic commitments, including agreement on early action to revamp the corrupt tax system and inauguration of a program of social legislation now too long delayed in France...
...I felt a compulsion to return," Putzrath explained, "because I wanted to put everything I have behind the struggle to rebuild Germany on a democratic foundation...
...The same amount of money will elect more Right-wing troublemakers than Communists because the Right troublemakers have local fol-lowings and a strong Nationalist appeal...
...As the tension mounted toward midnight, Schumacher showed the strain of the prolonged session...
...This last response—or lack of response—squared pretty much with what Geoffrey Parsons, editor of the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune, told me when I asked about French opinion on the Marshall Plan...
...At inns, restaurants, railroad stations, and government buildings I was met with almost unfailing kindness...
...I doubt if the average Frenchman thinks any more about it or has any more positive opinion on the subject than the average American...
...The CDU does have a militant but numerically impotent Left wing of 40 deputies composed of Catholic trade unionists and led by Dr...
...the Socialist Party, and the Radical Socialists, who are neither radical nor socialist, but far to the Right of the MRP and almost out of binocular-range of their fellow-coalitionists, the Socialists...
...We have made mistakes...
...IV The greatest single source of potential trouble in Western Germany is the baffling problem of the expellees or refugees...
...How well is evident everywhere I traveled by 1) the violence with which they attack the United States, almost to the exclusion of denouncing their political foes in the countries in which they live, and 2) the persistence with which their propaganda predicts an early American crash...
...A courageous, almost fanatical crusader, he is regarded as one of the most powerful orators in all Germany...
...Everywhere there are currents too treacherously easy to chart—if you ignore the cross-currents at work...
...The result has been at least two major weaknesses easy to detect...
...High Commissioner for Germany promptly issued a statement, based on a painstaking survey by its Reactions Analysis Division, reporting that not only was there no "recent upsurge in nationalist feeling," but actually a decline in recent months...
...It is my impression that the SPD is more doctrinaire Marxist than its French or British counterparts, but as violently anti-Communist as any party I know about anywhere...
...Europeans may think we are fuzzy, or visionary, or unsophisticated, or impatient, or too executive, but they don't think we are covetous of more power or territory...
...It is possible to collect almost every shade of reaction to American occupation policy in a single day, both among the Germans and our own civilian and military establishments...
...As for personalities, the Conservatives offer little in the way of attractive leadership...
...An Adenauer flunky rushed to a telephone and called Boeckler at Dusseldorf...
...But quite obviously I was exposed, however vicariously, to the bitter facts of life in France, for although my own person was well-fed, well-wined, and well-entertained every day of my stay there, I took with me an almost overpowering feeling of sadness and depression when I finally tore myself away...
...The visitor, now a naturalized American who fled the Hitler terror in its first phase, astonished me with the observation that in three months of teaching philosophy, he had not encountered "a single Nazi-like mind, despite throwing every possible opportunity at the students to speak up freely without fear of reprisal, academic or otherwise...
...We have been obliged to adjust theories to realities...
...But we have made a great start, and if we are given the opportunity, we intend to have a period of stock-taking and evaluation which will enable us to strengthen our program where weaknesses have developed...
...But now we are at peace and urged to learn a way of life from you...
...Production has increased steadily in coal, for instance, despite heart-breaking difficulties...
...Dissolution of the present Chamber could come if one of the coalition parties withdraws from the bloc, leaving the remaining parties without sufficient votes to govern...
...Some had felt that their leader had been intemperate during the debate, but the severity of the punishment and the authoritarian character of party structure in Germany prevented any split in ranks...
...It has delivered, in the finest spirit of democracy, on virtually every one of- the campaign promises it made in the decisive summer of 1945...
...Ernest Reuter, mayor of Berlin...
...The CDU-CSU believes in a relatively weak central government and a free-enterprise economy...
...In the hope that it will be helpful in evaluating political trends in Germany, I am recording my impressions of the strength, policies, and leadership of these parties in capsule form: The Christian Democratic Union, and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, dominate the present Government...
...Some American dailies have carried articles purporting to expose the revival of German affection for such characters as Hitler, Goering, Himm-ler, Goebbels & Company...
...The socialization of this basic industry has been delayed with Labor blessing until after the election so the outcome could serve as a mandate...
...What is not possible, what might indeed shatter the Marshall Plan and frustrate the whole purpose of American policy, is a spectacular attempt to combine short-term recovery with a long-term reorganization of Europe, to telescope into one great act of policy a process which took over three generations to complete in the pre-industrial United States...
...Many a worker whose union patriotically subscribed to the wage freeze to help prevent inflation feels he would have been much freer to kick over the traces and fight for more money if the Government were not his boss or if the Government were not his own...
...Its more reckless spokesmen claim the Gaullists will capture control of the government without being required to make alliances with any other party...
...The FDP is probably the most conservative of all parties in Germany, and yet on some fundamental, but non-economic, issues it finds greater kinship with the Social Democrats than with its ally in the Government, the CDU...
...In the porter's quarters downstairs, where I waited to be announced, hung a portrait of Karl Marx with flowing white beard...
...Do the Germans have a feeling remorse, or guilt, or shame over their acceptance and support of Hitler...
...Creature comforts are coming back...
...And yet the Socialists, bemused by the alternative to continuing collaboration with the Right and Center—the fall of the Government and a grave political crisis whose outcome they fear—have no immediate intention of pulling out and provoking that crisis...
...There is, however, a bloc of 60 Gaullists in the Chamber of Deputies, all of whom were elected under other party labels...
...They said they would prefer to deal with the West for many reasons, but, they hastened to add, if the West denied them access to raw materials and markets, they would turn, however reluctantly, to Russia for both...
...If is too close to the election to risk a flat-footed prediction...
...The pressure for a path somewhat left of center comes from the Catholic trade unions which exercise substantial influence in the councils of the party...
...23 general elections...
...The Communists, moreover, are much too weak to provide needed votes...
...Some of those with whom I talked—by no means all or even a majority—felt we were too tough and intransigent with Russia, that we have sometimes allowed the Russians to trap us into behaving as they do...
...One more story before I leave my colleagues of the press...
...Great Britain, with all her faults, mistakes, and shortcomings, is pioneering in the almost virgin field of economic democracy in much the way she did in the field of political democracy a century and more ago...
...Bevin is cordially disliked by the back-benchers in Commons and some of the party intellectuals, who feel he has bungled foreign policy badly...
...For every such interview, there must have been half a dozen to a dozen talks with ordinary citizens—waiters and maids and secretaries and taxi-drivers and bartenders and factory hands and merchants and inn-keepers and railway conductors—many of whom brought me face-to-face with some of the realities of living not readily available in chancelleries and embassies...
...The latter said he had been quoted accurately in the dispatch...
...headquarters, expressed grave concern over the incident and the severity of the punishment for Schumacher, and "suggested" that von Brentano inform Adenauer at once that a settlement must be reached immediately...
...I talked to many of the officials in charge and acquired some slight appreciation of the de-pressing magnitude of their fob...
...He said he has told the Social Democrats repeatedly that he is interested in a humane social program and that his administration will shortly introduce strong anti-cartel legislation in the Bundestag...
...I ate much better in Germany than in Britain...
...It may come as a shock to conservative Americans who are pulling for a Tory victory that the British Conservatives don't at all regard themselves as comparable to our Republic ans...
...At the Bundeshaus in Bonn—the equivalent of our Capitol in Washington—I found the genuine informality that I like to associate with the democratic spirit...
...It was...
...Jeanette Wolfe, member of the Berlin City Council...
...Who won the war, anyway...
...The Conservatives opposed all the major measures for socialization, but they are now committed only'to repeal of the Enabling Act to nationalize iron and steel...
...de Gaulle's top lieutenants and brain-trusters, was doubtless being over-optimistic with his prediction, for American and French political experts with whom I talked pointed to indications that the Gaullists are losing ground to the traditional conservatives...
...I spent the better part of a rainy Saturday at SOCIALIST headquarters...
...Adding up all the returns from those who did talk about it, and throwing in the impressions of American, British, and French officials and newspapermen who are not psychopathically either anti- or pro-German, I formed the conclusion that either a large minority or a small majority of Germans must have gone along with Hitler in varying degrees of enthusiasm because he gave them jobs and what they thought was security at a time of unprecedented unemployment, misery, and frustration...
...they asked bitterly...
...It was Nov...
...Its vote in Berlin for municipal offices totaled 858,461, or 64.5...
...Nationalism is strongest among the destitute expellees...
...In cool, clipped sentences Adenauer told the packed chamber that he was satisfied with the substantial concessions he had won from Britain, France, and the United States...
...French and British occupation officials...
...Don't buckle down to them, but don't go around slamming doors in their faces...
...I want to wind up this phase of my German impressions with a report of a conversation with a young man who made a great deal of sense to me...
...The impulses toward democracy and a spirit of free inquiry appear to be stronger among the younger than the older generation...
...The Social Services phase of the Labor Government's program has been vastly more popular...
...I had many doubts that anything could be done when I returned, but I feel more encouraged now...
...But prices arc high, wages low, taxes inequitable, insecurity widespread, inequality rampant, and politics close to crisis...
...I assumed that one must be for the Deputies and Cabinet members and the other for secretaries and the public, which is roughly the way it is in Washington...
...They have no claim to any achievement of their own...
...There has not been time to train young men to staff many of the policy-making and managerial posts in the vast new machinery required to administer both nationalization and the social security program...
...The presiding officer, Koeh-ler, who is not too bright and is totally lacking in experience, might well have said that of course Schumacher didn't mean to impugn Adenauer's patriotism and would doubtless prefer to withdraw the statement...
...There are hopeful signs of improvement in the near future, but the Berliners feel so beaten and have been disappointed so often that they cannot shake their despair...
...Nationalism still runs deep in Germany, and its origins are more than economic...
...But on the larger problem of integrating the economies of the Marshall Plan countries there has been inertia, indecision, and downright resistance...
...Marshall Planners...
...It was Maurice Schumann, former chairman of the presently ruling Mouvement Republicaine Populaite (MRP) and now one of its leading spokesmen in the Chamber of Deputies, who pointed out to me that there is much greater continuity of policy in France than the constant reshuffling erf ministeries would indicate to the outside world...
...The Ruhr I can't leave the subject of Germany without at least a snapshot report of my journey into the Ruhr...
...The forms are mostly there now...
...Certainly the CDU-CSU benefited from the upturn in economic conditions resulting from the currency stabilization and American aid, and emerged as the most powerful political force in present-day Germany...
...Moreover, there are many cases in the repeated shake-ups where ministers have merely changed portfolios, but continue to exercise the same influence in the Government...
...The other American reported that "a number of serious-minded Frenchmen are gravely concerned over what will happen when the Marshall Plan ends...
...The most curious answer I received came from Isiah Berlin, presently a professor of political philosophy at Oxford, but formerly an official in the British embassies in Washington and Moscow...
...They have been effective, too, in fanning a deep-seated French fear that as a result of the Marshall Plan, then the Atlantic Pact, and now American-financed armaments, France is losing her independence of action and becoming little more than a puppet of the American colossus...
...A brief commentary on the major parties may help your understanding of the news from France: THE COMMUNISTS are presently the largest single party in France (183 Deputies out of 620, or 29%), but they have had no voice in the councils of government since they were booted out of the Cabinet in May, 1947...
...That's what I thought I heard most of all on my swing through France, Germany, and England...
...Prime Minister Clement Attlee is a mild-mannered, unassuming wisp of a man...
...It is too early to judge the results of the re-introduction of democracy in Germany...
...But, Labor has-won many of these districts by somewhat smaller majorities...
...I took with me, of course, in addition to the 66 pounds of flight luggage allowed, a bundle of my own prejudices...
...2) the halting of the original postwar spread of Communism...
...Respect for America is great...
...There can be little doubt that the trend toward cartelization is in progress again...
...I can understand that...
...My further impression, based on equally inconclusive evidence, is that the Nazis' brutal treatment of minorities, especially Jews, was not popular with most Germans, but not as militantly unpopular as it might have been...
...Inevitably there was no enthusiasm for the new arrivals on the part of many, and just as inevitably this has provoked smothering tensions at a time when the infant republic desperately needs a chance to breathe...
...as Frenchmen and democrats, we have much to lose by playing into the hands of the Communists and the Gaullists...
...FDP support is vital to the CDU, for the former polled 2,827,885 votes, or 11.9%, giving it 52 seats in the Bundestag...
...the Rev...
...3) had presented the settlement as a fait accompli...
...The only feeling in common I encountered between the workers and the managers was a strong antipathy toward the British as a result of the dismantling program...
...I wish I could answer that question more unequivocally than I am going to, but there just isn't any easy answer...
...Thus, it is bending every effort to convince the Germans that their destiny lies with Russia, and not with the West...
...Actually, if I heard them rightly and read their literature accurately, the Tories sound further Left than our moderate Democrats, for they haven't the slightest intention, they say, of restoring free enterprise for industries now nationalized, or of abolishing controls in areas of scarcity, or of wiping out the comprehensive program of Social Services...
...The Communist Party in France is well-heeled and ably led...
...There are two restaurants in the Bundeshaus—one more pretentious than the other...
...Some of our operations are still in the experimental stage...
...The British, of course, are far from being wholly to blame, for while the operation was carried out in their zone—the Ruhr is entirely in the British area of Germany—it was largely the result of over-all allied policy...
...Schumacher snapped back that it was a lie...
...They were allowed to take only what they could carry on their backs...
...My home was ruined by bombs...
...The entire party and political structure in Germany, and in Europe, is gravely weakened by the fact that no party can answer the basic question of how to prevent war," Putzrath told me...
...During the next two days I drove through this valley of coal, iron, and steel, visiting mills and inquiring into the facts about cartelization, dismantling, labor-management relations, and housing...
...Schumacher, who spent most of the Nazi era in concentration camps...
...The SPD position, as nearly as I could determine, is based 1) on its conviction that German democracy can work only if the nation is allowed to function with greater independence, and 2) on its political shrewdness in recognizing that its criticism of Adenauer and the CDU for yielding too much to the Allies is politically appealing...
...Or perhaps there just wasn't any where I happened to go...
...What is significant is that taxes on workers' wages and the program of Social Services have actually conspired to prevent a greater increase in production under a Government whose very life depends on more and more and still more production...
...his Bundestag floorleader, van Bren-tano: and more than a dozen of the deputies...
...In the August elections they received less than six percent of the vote and failed to carry a single district in Western Germany...
...I don't know...
...Their goals are removal of tariff and quota barriers among the countries of Europe and, more positively, the coordination of the countries' economies...
...Constitution...
...They have traveled a long way in a short time...
...They have almost no money, but Heine told me there are well-founded reports that they have late-ly acquired some cash from the Soviet Union...
...The Marshall Plan," said one of them, "has definitely stopped Communism in its tracks and has given France a breathing spell...
...In the August election, the CDU-CSU kept its Left wing under wraps and campaigned on a conservative program of free enterprise...
...Its program includes state-supported denominational schools and close relations between church and state...
...Communist leadership skillfully exploits every weakness of the ruling coalition...
...Heine, and many another German, told me that there were a number of local and regional pockets of neo-fascism which were not now numerically significant in a national sense, but which could become a full-scale threat if they grew, found a common leader, and coalesced into a national anti-democratic force...
...They spend prodigious hours at it...
...Sentiment in Germany, among the political figures I consulted, leans strongly toward decisive action on unification...
...he asked...
...What the "exposes" carefully avoided revealing was that the cover pictures were carried to illustrate "Now It Can Be Told" memoirs by Hitler's masseur or Goering's maid or Himmler's barber or Goebbels' manicurist...
...It believes ardently in nationalization of basic industries, worker participation in the administration of both public and private industry, and a comprehensive program of social security...
...Their purpose, as I understand it, is not to turn the clock back, but to stop it where it stands...
...In this connection, the Communists have sought to make alliances with former Nazi leaders...
...Let the British send all the trained technicians they want to see that we behave, but for heaven's sake let us produce the stuff that Germany and Europe need"—that's the way the industrialists talked t* me...
...It is the latter, not the President, who is the operating head of the German Government...
...From his seat in the front row, where he lay half sprawled, he shouted to Adenauer that some sections of the settlement were a sellout of Germany which the workers would not accept...
...it was war and we were living under Hitler...
...Despite Britain's program of cold austerity —I didn't have a single egg in London but had all I wanted in Germany—the former has achieved a degree of equalized distribution and full employment undreamed of in Germany...
...Winston Churchill is still "good old Winnie" to masses of Englishmen who won't vote for him or his kind...
...There were angry shouts, and much milling around and waving of arms...
...The debate that followed made history...
...There isn't any easy answer, partly, I suppose, because I didn't pop the question that way to Germans, but rather let them talk about it if they felt in the mood...
...in others it plays around with some pretty questionable characters...
...The FDP is Protestant in religion, favors the complete separation of church and state, and advocates a strong central government...
...American commercial representatives in Germany, who have ways of finding out about events in the Soviet Zone, reported to me that the Russians are lifting restrictions, winking at private enterprise, and generally trying to ingratiate themselves with the Germans...
...Taxes hit the poor, too, through the levies on cigarets, beer, and amusements—but it is significant that cigarets, beer, and amusements are available today to more people and in more quantity than had ever been the case before...
...But the poor in Britain are eating much better than the poor in Germany, and much better than they ever ate in their lives...
...The line between the two is not so great as we in America sometimes like to think...
...VII The Communist Party (KPD) is the smallest of the four nationwide parties, and actually has less strength in the Bundestag than several purely regional groups...
...Most of the fields in which nationalization has been introduced were shot through with obsolescence and monopoly, and although progress now is still far from desired goals, the trend toward modernization is pronounced...
...The latter, he charged, has snuggled up to the cartel crowd, invited former Nazis into his Government, ignored Parliament when it suited his purpose, and conceded too much to the Occupation powers...
...XIII Now for the last question and my last impression...
...if we pursue a policy of intelligent generosity and bury the last bones of Morgen-thauism and revenge...
...In its formal Statement of Policy, entitled The Right Road for Britain, the Tories concede the popularity of most of the Labor measures by embracing them as their very own while insisting they would do a more orderly, efficient, and inexpensive job of administering them...
...Despite these difficulties, nationalism has been at least a modest success up to now...
...America must move soon...
...Its outstanding personality is Prof...
...I brought back with me a suitcase full of documents, reports, statistical analyses, and production charts on the British economy under four and a half years of the Labor Government...
...GREAT BRITAIN In Germany I encountered two kinds of people who were anxious to make comparisons between Britain and Germany...
...You are not to assume from this that the Conservatives admitted defeat...
...The Labor Party, which celebrates its 50th anniversary Feb...
...One perplexing bug in the Labor Party program is worth passing notice...
...The de Gaulle brain-trusters, notably Soustelle and Andre Mal-raux, regard their party as being definitely Left of Center...
...The industrialists insisted that if the Allies are genuinely interested in security, they could have guarded and can now guard against any revival of munitions production by maintaining inspectors in the factories...
...The Office of the U.S...
...This stems partly from the fact that the workers in nationalized industry have been deprived of a traditional safety-valve—beefing about the boss —because the boss is now supposed to be their own baby...
...Both are predominantly Catholic, although both include a number of Protestants...
...labor leaders and Ruhr industrialists...
...Putzrath wound up on a cautiously hopeful note...
...The struggle to make a living and find a place to live took too great a chunk out of their lives...
...Le Monde, a conservative daily, snapped: "Really, the Americans are trying to appear more European than the Europeans...
...Despite the spirit of class-war with which the Minister of Health in particular has sought to disrupt national unity, the Conservative party has welcomed the new Social Services which it has done much to create...
...24 when the Bundestag assembled late in the afternoon to hear Chancellor Adenauer's report on his deal with the Big Three on dismantling, occupation policy, and revival of foreign trade...
...I was saddened by the feeling that Schumacher was too sick and intemperate a person to lead that party during this critical period in its and the Republic's history...
...Their shady dealings have contributed to a rekindling of anti-Semitism...
...Perhaps the most striking evidence of Russia's present strategy is to be found in Germany...
...There may be some disputing over the identity of the SPD's Number Three man, but I have arbitrarily decided to tap Ernest Reuter, mayor of Berlin...
...Unless the Socialists turn to a firmer policy than the present one, they are in great danger of losing even more of their following...
...Americans who bring with them romantic notions of a Third Force in France—a functioning democratic, Left-of-Center buffer between capitalism and communism— are swiftly and sadly awakened to the facts of life—for there is no Third Force, except on paper, and even the paper has been mislaid...
...They feel that the program has made it too easy for the powers-that-be to avoid dealing with fundamental problems, and as a result, they have not done some of the things that they would have been obliged to do first if France had been dependent on her own resources...
...24 The toddling Parliament of West Germany, then hardly a month old, was on its worst behavior when I came calling...
...XI The concept of a United States of Europe has wide appeal, especially in France and Germany, but when attempts are made to translate the ideal into concrete action, they founder on the rocks of tradition, nationalism, fear, suspicion, and practical politics...
...The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is Germany's second largest...
...a Chancellor elected by the Bundestag, and a Cabinet appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Chancellor...
...The latest figures I saw showed that Western Europe has almost as much to eat as before the war—the average is 96% of prewar...
...It has meant in Britain food and rent subsidies, free medical care, cradle-to-the-grave protection against disability, free lunches for school children, family allowances, wider educational opportunities for all, and more universal opportunities foi recreation and relaxation...
...Some of these are now reinforced by what I saw and heard, but others—more of them, in fact, than I like to admit—he scattered over the ravaged European countryside...
...In France I conferred with spokesmen for the Popular Republicans (MRP), the Socialists, the Gaullists, and the Communists, and with David Bruce, our ambassador, officials of the Marshall Plan programs, editors, reporters, and radio commentators (French and American), Garry Davis, and a wide assortment of unknown but well-informed functionaries in and out of government...
...I do know that the Germans, like any other beaten and frustrated people, could respond to a helping hand and friendly gesture...
...Their program is known as Association...
...Workers have persistently refused to agree to longer work weeks or to put in substantial overtime because 1) more money would put them in a higher tax bracket, and 2) their incentive to earn and save more has been lessened greatly by the program of Social Services, for the worker does not have to stash something away for medical emergencies or dental bills or funeral expenses...
...Altogether I had 90 more or less formal interviews...
...What might be more helpful and timely would be an impressionistic survey of the issues at stake as Britain moved forward toward the approaching Feb...
...V The Council returned at 5 a.m...
...While they were enthusiastic about the immediate effects of the Marshall Plan, both of them feared that the program had tended to shore up a corrupt and inequitable system...
...The executive branch consists of a President, elected by the Bundestag and the state legislatures...
...More recently, however, he has conceded, begrudgingly to be sure, that the Prime Minister has gained stature in office...
...Association," said Soustelle, "would bring about a complete change of social climate by wiping out present conflicts between workers and owners and replacing the present in...
...From my language-muddled talks with the ordinary folk of France, unhappily mostly in Paris, I took away the impression that the people are as divided as their government...
...The principal shortcoming of the Marshall Plan has been the failure of the participating countries to achieve or move toward anything resembling a unified continental economy...
...The conservative coalition is firmly in power...
...You may insist, with considerable correctness, that the Labor program has developed some built-in bugs of its own...
...Most of them didn't feel in the mood, which may be good or bad...
...Now vice president of the Bundestag, he was formerly professor of law at the University of Tuebingen...
...It would be a perilous mistake to conclude from these random notes that all is sweetness and light and democracy in Germany...
...I spent a day with officials of the German Federation of Labor at their headquarters building in Dusseldorf...
...J. K. V. Loesch, chairman of the German Fine Steel Works, and Dr...
...They call him "The Fox" and they insist that he constantly fashions escape corridors for himself by the very ambiguity of the language he uses...
...To too many Germans democracy is inseparably associated with the presence of occupation armies, dismantling of industries, division of the country, the presence of vast numbers of homeless expellees, and economic insecurity...
...Actually, I was told, Bevin does pretty much what the permanent staff in the Foreign Office tells him to do...
...They placed the RPF's strength at about 30% of the total national vote...
...For many years the lord mayor of Cologne, he was suspended in 1933 when the Nazis came to power, was twice arrested and once imprisoned by the Hitlerites, but was otherwise permitted to live in retirement during the Nazi era...
...Almost everyone with whom I talked in Germany, France, and England, felt that the cold war had moderated, at least as far as Europe was concerned, and that the chance for peace in the immediate future was greater than at any time during the past few years...
...Rival camps have developed around the foreign policy views of Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps...
...Many are working as unskilled laborers in factories, where they are disliked and mistrusted by the real workers...
...I recalled the words of a lawyer in Berlin, who had experienced indescribable suffering under Hitler...
...High Commissioner...
...We have not found all the answers by any means...
...The CDU is the postwar descendant of the Catholic Center Party (as the CSU is the successor to the old Bavarian People's Party...
...Where would the start be made and who would make the initial sacrifices...
...It polled 6,932,272 votes in Western Germany, or 29.2%, which gave it 131 seats...
...And yet many middle-of-the-roaders and SPD sympathizers with strong democratic impulses are fearful that German tradition is too authoritarian to warrant taking on the tremendous task of operating industry through centralized mechanisms...
...There, are still a great many difficulties" ahead—and perhaps more setbacks than we can foresee now—but I'M convinced that Germany is heading to the right direction...
...The short-run effects of the Marshall Plan have been phenomenally good...
...There are many tips and downs ahead, but we are now headed the right way...
...They were not through caucusing, they said...
...ferior condition of the workers with the more hopeful and meaningful role of Associates in a joint enterprise...
...The Kremlin seems to have decided that Germany is the key to its chance to take Western Europe from within...
...Actually the MRP has its conservative and progressive wings, just as has our Democratic Party, which it resembles in many ways...
...The political facts of life in Germany make it clear that nationalization is out of the picture for the present and the immediate future...
...These are not the Displaced Persons (DP's), who have a special status in Germany and are awaiting removal to Palestine, the United States, Britain, Canada, and other nations...
...You get riled up over there much too easily—much more so than we do and some of us are less than a quarter of an hour from the Russian frontier...
...The debate whieh followed Adenauer's presentation began in mid-evening and raged until after dawn next day...
Vol. 14 • February 1950 • No. 2
