NEWS OF THE WEEK
THERE is no sense in pretending that the situation which is developing in Western Germany can be contained indefinitely within the present policies and administrative machinery of the occupying authorities. Things are moving too fast and too far for that. It is true that the existing arrangements for bringing into existence a Ruhr Authority, a Military Security Board and a West German Government .are orderly and reasonable, as far as they go. The first German outcry against the Ruhr statute has ceased to be an attempt to secure immediate revision through a show of popular horror, and has settled down into more realistic policy aimed at ultimate revision—a policy which has received the imprimatur of the constituent assembly now sitting at Bonn. As an earnest of responsible behaviour, as distinct from the expedient of " trying it on" which met the first announcement of the Ruhr Authority and which still slows up the programme of dismantling at Bochum and elsewhere, the Land Government of North Rhine- Westphalia has been appointed to act as official German trustee in all questions concerning the Ruhr statute until the West German Government is set up. At the same time the negotiations pre- liminary to the announcement of the Military Security Board go on with a deliberation which presumably denotes thoroughness. Certainly haste would be inadvisable, since this body, which will have to continue in existence for many years, must be given as solid a foundation as possible. And as to the constitution-makers at Bonn, they may, despite their persistent excursions into party politics and the heavy weather they are making of their task, produce a scheme for representative institutions which the German people could in due time come to understand.
All this is good. The trouble is that by the time these develop- ments have reached maturity (and possibly well before that) events may have outstripped them. The recrudescence of national self- consciousness goes on at such a rate that the occupying authorities, working within an organisation which was largely created to lift a defeated people out of apathy into self-help, may soon find them- selves unable to cope with it. Economic recovery is reaching the stage in which it begins to express itself in arrogance, hostility even to the most necessary controls, and a feverish attempt to arrest the programme of dismantling. The drop forge at Bochum which a handful of Germans have refus-A to remove was in fact scheduled by the Humphrey Committee as unnecessary for peaceful purposes, and the Humphrey Committee cannot be accused of any lack of tenderness for German feelings. Every day brings some new piece of evidence that there are still plenty of Germans who do not know how to help themselves without harming others. The whole situation is changing and the outlook of the Powers must change with it. But certain pillars of Western policy must remain. The Military Security Board must be made solid, effective and durable. The new constitution must be made dictator-proof. And the West German economy must not be allowed to break away from the wider schemes for European recovery. In this last point lies the seed of a genuinely united Western Europe with Germany as an integral part of it.
