Evening star., 1948-07-09

war Berlin. BOMBED, Sneued, Iougnt oVer'
sacked and raped it was a gigantic, sinking
rubble-heap in the summer OF 1945. year
later it was a great city again-"the Mecca
of Germany" as Gen. Robertson has called 1t.
Even in this tragic July of 1s48 the atmos-
phere of Berlin is strangely bracing. Coming
from Western Germany you feel you are
emerging from the muddle and corruption of
rear area into the clean, sharp air of the front
line; and from the musty stufhness of the
provinces into the bright urbanity Of q capital
Nothing here of the sulkiness, pettiness and
eternal complaining of the zones. You breathe
an air Of danger and fortitude.
For a day or two the visitor is almost tempted
to forget the danger, fascinated once more by
the ease and flow of Berlin's almost disem-
bodied city life. There has been virtually
no rebuilding in Berlin, only cleaning up.
But the cleaning-up has been done with q
truly passionate thoroughness; and Berlin,
which once boasted itself the cleanest city
of the world, can now fairly claim to be the
worlds cleanest ruin
There hardly is any rubble left. The gaunt
shells of burnedout buildings stand against
the sky, and there is a defiant elegance in the
many new shop fronts scattered about the
ruined west END.
The streets are crowded, but there Us no
lOlIcIulS, uO 1doolluuC, lilIls
crowds move with the steady purpose of people
at work. The industries of the British sector
again are turning out their famous electrical
goods and wireless sets-sometimes with ma
chimes which the workers two or three years
ago salvaged from the rubble and wreckage
OF their factories with their bare hands.
Valiant Activity Everywhere.
The Sunday crowds bent for Grunewa1d or
Wannsee have some of the old popular wit and
jollty. The theaters. all booming, are ex-
ceent: the press is lively, and in the boule-
ward cafes of the honey-combed Kurfursten-
damn bespectacled intellectuals, slipping dim
nondescrpt brew, discuss existentialism and
European union with an informed and serious
keenness which puts Londoner to shame.
Here are ruins and poverty, yes, but no
squalor. Here is a great living European me-
tropos which mraculously has pulled itself
from the abyss by its own bootstraps and the
marvellous spectacle almost makes you for
get that it now lives under q menace more
frightening than the physical ruin over which
1t has triumphed.
1t takes day or two before you begin to feel
the silent terror in which this city lives. Per-
haps it is two persons on the tram silently
showing each other an item in a newspaper
They don't say a word, but there is a curious
SlIIluitdHcOuS GWlICIl AL tllcA 1dCCc. IOu lOOh
the item up in your own paper: 1t says that
young Berlin journalist, who had disappeared
some months ago and of whose whereabouts
the Russian command had denied all knowl-
edge, now officially is announced to be in Rus
sian custody and to have confessed to "es
pionage"
There are not many Berliners who can read
such news items without thinking of their own
fate If. -.
The IF" is seldom put into words. But it is
the one thing every one thinks about, silently
all the time.
The city is cam stolid, composed even gay.
But for months now it has felt a moose around
it's neck, and almost day by day the moose, by
imperceptible stages, has been frightened. Dur
ing the past few days 1t has touched the bare
skin.
New travel restrictions No more parcel post
from Berlin to the western zones. No more
stoppings of the interzonal trains in the west
ern city sectors. Tighter regulations for news
paper deliveries. Stricter requirements for in
terzonal passports. These have been the pro-
sale little items. tucked away in the inner
pages of the newspapers, with which Berllners
have been slowly, week by week, prepared for
the total blockade and threat OF starvation
which they now face.
less puzzlement: Why don't the western powers
react? Do they regard 1t as too unmportant?
Are they holding their fire? Or :?
This "or" again, is seldom put into words.
But behind it there is thought OF stark
horror
Horror Silently Endured.
Berlin had its two months of purely Russian
occupation in 1945. They were two months
which no Berlin family ever will forget. Since
then Berlin, relying on western presence ana
protection, has earned Russas wrath oy It's
democratic resistance to Communist dlctatlon
If western presence fails-I have heard no
Berliner put the rest of the sentence dnto
WORDS Instead, there is twitch of the face;
and short, blank stare.
You meet that twitch and that stare every
day. every hour almost, once you have learned
to look for it. But it never lasts more than
a moment and another moment later, you
find the man or woman on whose face you
saw it talking on with confidence, even with
a smile.
The most amazing and the most moving
thing about the Berlin of July, 1948, Is not
its vitality, not its hidden anxiety, but its
courage an almost gay, almost reckless
courage of millions of simple, anonymous men,
women and children in a situation Of utter
peril and helplessness, which I witnessed only
once before in any city-the London Of Sep
tember, 1910.
It is the same feeling Of having made ones
throw. having dared everything and braved
everything, and having passed beyond the
stage where fears are worth considering and
chances worth calculating. Hence the Berlin
of July, 194a, has the same air of serene
normality under threat Of starvation and
worse, as the London of September, 1910. had
under the Battle OF Britain and the threat Of
invasion.
The chances Of holding and-what is more
of protecting Berlin, the conditions. the issues
involved, are the talk Of every Allied ONCE and
every Allied mess in Berlin. It b anxious and
h.,