LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
TUG-OF-WAR IN GERMANY
Sta,—The German problem can only be approached—if we are to keep it in its proper proportion—from the standpoint of the broad issues of today. The late war was fought and won to establish and safeguard the Four Freedoms ; the logical consequence of victory should have been for a Germany liberated and purged from dictatorship to work her passage home by participating in the reconstruction of a democratic Europe, and finally becoming an integral part of it.
The Western Allies' task should have been to harmonise the two big political groupings—the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats— and to set up at the earliest opportunity a representative German Government in the West, to serve as a focal point for all Germany and to provide that moral sanction without which efficient and able Germans will not come forward to assume responsibility for economic or other German affairs. This was not done, and now, disillusioned and em- bittered, the Germans are biding their time, hoping to exploit their role as a balance between East and West. There has been, too, an alarming disintegration and multiplication of political parties—a process of ad- ministration so typical of that German political life which preceded the Nazi dictatorship.
In the failure to deal effectively with this German problem, the Socialist parties of several European Governments bear a heavy load of responsibility, because of their doctrinaire attitude and inability to see the broad main issues. By insisting on a Socialist approach they failed to bring together the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, which alone could have built up a homogeneous structure. By insisting on nationalisation of key industries, they ignored the unerring lesson of recent history, that it is not the rivalries of private industries which create the threat of war (even if they are exploited by war-mongers), but the formidable machine of a State-controlled industry, harnessed for a political objective and indifferent to the advantages or disadvantages of -those engaged in it. It should be remembered how often in the past Socialists were the prelude to a dictatorship, because of their obstinacy in not rallying the forces of the nations they claimed to lead.
A word, finally, about France's desire for an American guarantee of security. The American people are likely to support whole-heartedly a system based on defence of the Four Freedoms. They will support a system in which they are themselves interested Materially. But they will not defend what appears to them a balance-of-power game, on the lines of old local European quarrels.—Yours faithfully,
VIATOR.
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