BLIND ALLEY
THE duplication of Russian notes on Germany may be merely another symptom of the schizophrenia which seems to have been Stalin's legacy to the Kremlin: it may have been provoked by the helpful suggestions of Western columnists as to how the first note could have been improved: or it may have been part of the original design. At all events, the note that was delivered, through the East Germany News Agency last Sunday, was addressed not to Washington nor to Paris nor to London, but to the potential electors of West Germany and to the restless subjects of East Germany.
For the West Germans, the Russians had the following message: you want unity and sovereignty; Dr. Adenauer will deny you both. The adhesion of West Germany to the Atlantic bloc, whether through NATO or through the EDC, must make unity with East Germany impossible. And the Bonn Conventions, which Dr. Adenauer has already concluded with the Western occupying powers, are proof that full sovereignty will never be restored until there is a valid peace treaty for a united Germany. Therefore, throw Adenauer out. For the East Germans, there was a similar moral: you can expect no change in your position until the Western Powers permit the unification of all Germany, which they are now obstructing by their liaison with Dr. Adenauer and the West German militarists. • All this the Germans of the East and the West have heard before. They have known it to. be false because the Russians themselves have refused to discuss the only basis on which there could be a peace treaty for a united Germany, that is, free elections for an all-German government with whom a treaty of peace could be negotiated. This time, Moscow has made an attempt to tackle the bull, not by the horns but by the tail. The latest note takes the crqcial issue of the order in which these things should happen—the peace treaty, the all-German government and the free elections—and blurs it in such a way that everything will appear to be happen- ing at once. The Four Powers are to be discussing a peace treaty while a provisional all-German government is formed from the ranks of the regimes in power in the East and the West; the provisional government will in turn be consulted during the treaty negotiations while it is discussing the con- ditions under, which free elections could be held. It is all designed to suggest that there has been a concession of principle.
There has in fact been nothing of the sort; the bull is still galloping at large. In the first place, the peace treaty as conceived by Moscow is still to be based on Potsdam; any united Germany is to be unarmed and without alliances. It is also, in the interest of Russia's Polish satellite, to accept the Oder-Neisse as its eastern frontier. Finally, it is to be formed on the assumption that the present government of East Germany represents the people who live, there. Yet if June 17th proved nothing else, it did conclusively prove that the German Democratic Republic rules in East Germany by the strength of the Soviet Army and by the Soviet Army alone. The provisional all-German government is thus to consist of the elected representatives of West Germany and a number of Russian tanks. It is fairly safe to assume that not even Dr. Adenauer's main political opponents would be willing to accept any one of these implications. The second Russian note is just as blind an alley as the first.
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