Russia and the Germans
The announcement of the votes cast in the elections for the "People's Congress" in the Soviet Zone is an interesting com- mentary on Russia's decision to lift the Berlin blockade. The motives for that action were no doubt various, and most of them can be easily divined. One, unquestionably, was the manifest inferiority of economic conditions In the Soviet Zone to those in the West. It now looks as though another contributory factor was the political unreliability of the population. When, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear by the occupying authorities, and the intensive efforts of a highly developed propaganda-machine, one-third of the voters have recorded " No " against the single list of candidates submitted to them it is clear that independence of mind among Germans in the Eastern Zone has been by no means extinguished. The Russians will no doubt claim, and it is possible that they are entitled to claim, that what the vote actually proves is the absence of any compulsion on the voters. But it is a fairly safe deduction that at least fifty per cent. of the Russian Zone voters, and probably much more, are anti-Communist at heart. But the paper majority for the candidates for the People's Congress remains, and the Congress will presumably be set up. The prospect should not, and to all appearance will not, retard in any way progress with the election of the Western German Government at Bonn. On that point Dr. Adenauer, who was President of the Parliamentary Council which drafted the constitution, spoke firmly and wisely to Bonn University students on Tuesday. In Western Germany no obstacles to political and economic progress exist. How far that is true of Berlin is not yet clear. All the first signs after the lifting of the blockade were that Russia meant to be genuinely co-operative, but irritating incidents since on the railway and the autobahn, too similar to those which preceded the imposition of the blockade last June, prompt some misgivings. There can be no relaxation of vigilance on the Allied side till the Conference of Foreign Ministers has either succeeded or failed.
