A PLAN FOR GERMANY
Stn,—The Nauheimer Kreis, a growing group of German politicians, industrialists and intellectuals of different parties, has worked out a plan for the solution of the German problem. This plan suggests the neutralisation of Germany on the basis of a permanent Neutrality Statute, which leaves Germany disarmed and evacuated by all the occupying Powers. To eliminate any production of armaments an International Civil Control Commission would be established in Germany by the four guaranteeing Powers. The organisation of certain police forces in the eastern part of Germany would be balanced by other police forces in the western part. Each Government in every one of the German States or Lander would have a reliable police force before the evacuation of foreign troops had been completed.
There would be one year's time after the treaty of peace and neutral- isation to prepare this security and to guarantee the protection of constitutional liberty and of democratic home-rule in all German States. In most of these States the Communist Party is ski-• small that it cannot claim a seat in the Cabinet. There would be no Communistic Ministers of Home Affairs with a police force at their disposal.
The Atlantic Union with 400 million people of European origin and 300 million affiliated allies, protectorates and colonies would outbalance definitely the powerful combination of Soviet Russia and her satellite States. Whole continents on the other side of the oceans are waiting for constructive and co-ordinated works of peace. And these again would strengthen the defensive power of the Atlantic Union. If only a space of time is won for a period of peace—and that can be done by creating a space of neutral territory between the clashing interests in Central Europe—then this time can be still better used by the Atlantic world for economic reconstruction and social evolution.
The essential question remains, how the Germans themselves would be prepared to solve the problem of giving the military vacuum in the middle of competing interests and ideas the reliable character of a well- balanced and self-governing political system. To make Germany, in spite of overpopulation, economically fit and capable of paying for indispensable imports from the West and from overseas without becoming a disturbing competitor in the world market, the present system of reparations to the Soviet Union should be transformed into permanent reciprocal trade betweeni the whole of the German economy and Soviet Russia, including the other States of Central and South-East Europe. A commercial treaty of this kind, accepted and even favoured by the Atlantic Union, could be based on the surplus of raw products from the East ; it would not be directly supported by the investments of the Marshall Plan. But an increase in German production as a whole would enable -Germany to pay for these investments by increased exports.
A neutralised, demilitarised and freely working Germany, economically linked with both East and West, with obligations under the Marshall Plan and of co-operation with Russia for her reconstruction, would in a few decades do much to overcome the differences in the standard of living between the East and West. This alone will ultimately remove the most dangerous motives of war or unceasing revolution.—
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