The Waterbury Democrat., 1946-08-14
by Drezg Pearson

war bv Hitler and is to be built up after the war; 50 Byrnes agreed that the factories should be returned to Austria. Amid paeans of praise from the Vienna press therefore with thousands of people watch ing Clark held impressive ceremony at the Her mann Goering works and handed 1t back to Austrla Naturally this raised U. s. prestige sky-hlgn ana made the Russians and their seizure policy look very sick indeed.
 Meanwhile the Russians have been franticaly trying to promote Communism ill thelr zone-tne wealthest and largest of all Allied occupied areas The only real progress they have made is through the policy of hiring Austrian workers in Russian managed factories at much higher wage level than is paid in other Allied areas In addltlon-and III country which is starving, this is all-lmportant- Russian employees get 5000 food calories per day as against 1900 for workers in the rest Of Austria Naturally therefore, Austrian WorEmen flock to tts- sian factories whenever they can
 What the Austrian workers don't know is that their extra wages out of the Austrian treasury and that their food comes in part, from the United States What happens is that the Russians collect extra occupation costs the Austrian government and use the money to pay off ther factory Workers Also the Russians get an extra food ration from American sources thanks to the stupidlty oI U.N.R.R.A. and our French and British allles
 Here is the inside story of how this happenss Last Winter General Clark had been feeding the Austrians in the American zone their full calory ration but the French were falling behind and wanted U.NR.R.A. to relieve them of the burden Also the British though having considerable food on hand proposed selling it to U.NRRA and letting UNRRA distribute it in the British zone. This meant of course that Uncle Sam would pay 70 percent of the cost since TO percent of U.N.R.RAs cost is borne by the United States.
 All of this played right into the Russian hands, as Austria's richest farm lands in their zone. The Reds should have sent food into other areas. Instead they were using it to feed the Red Army and when U NR.R.A took over all feeding, the Russians simply had field day. This duck soup for them They not only pulled certain amount of fooo away from the other occupied zones through U.NRRAS unuue distribution policy but they sent tons of fooo back to Russia The result that before June ], UNRRA found its food supplies siphoned off and the entire country, outside the Russian zone was on the verge of starvation.
 General Clark finally had to come through with l8OOO tons of American food to save Austria from chaos He is now demanding that UNR.R.A. stralght- en out it's distribution and penallze the Rsslans for shipping food out of Austria
 These are some of the problems in that part of Europe where democracy meets the frontier Of Balkan dictatorships and where the most important test of Soviet expansion is being staged Austria prior to seizure by Hitler had developed pretty good parlia- mentary system and the Austrians know how to gov ern themselves. They did not jump from Czars to Soviets-both dictaorshps-as did the Russians, and today there is no country in Europe where the Rus sans are less popular last Winters Austrian elec tons the faced Sovets found themselves polling just percent of the vote. The situation since then hasn't changed In other words, country which had some experience in pre-war democracy and which Is given half chance to support itself isn't going 10 rush enthusiastically into the arms of Soviet Russia