NEWS OF THE WEEK
OUT of the German acceptance of the Anglo-American plan for a strengthened German administration in Western Germany, French irritation at not being told the details of the plan beforehand and unbridled Russian denunciation of it developments of inter- national as well as of purely German importance may emerge. The French attitude is natural, but since the arrangement concerns only the Anglo-American Zone in the first instance, and the co-operation of both the other two occupying Powers was invited, there was something to be said for not in the first instance differentiating between France and Russia. But Anglo-French conversations are going on in London, and it is to be hoped that close collaboration with the French Zone, if not actual fusion, will result from them. The new proposals open a new era in the life of Western Germany, involving as they do a transfer to German shoulders of responsi- bility that ought to have been placed there before this. The pro- vision for an enlarged Economic Council, with an Upper House, composed of members directly elected by each Land Government, and an Executive or Cabinet, does in fact suggest something like a Parliament for Western Germany, based on a compromise between the federation which the Americans and the German Christian Democrats favour and the centralisation advocated elsewhere. And it may well evoke from the Russians a response in the shape of a rival Eastern German Government, and the attempted eviction of British and Americans from Berlin on the ground that the quadripar- tite system has broken down and the pretence of working may as well be abandoned. All that looks- like coming to a head when the Allied Control Commission meets in Berlin next week. Then or earlier the Russians will have to decide whether to co-operate, on
an all-Germany basis, in the currency reform scheme which the British and Americans intend to put through, and more generally whether to return anything but an aggressive negative to the appeal
which Mr. Morrison addressed to Moscow in an admirably phrased speech on Sunday. Reports of extensive Communist sabotage plots prompted by Cominform look ominous. However that may be, the British and Americans cannot stay progress in the West. The advance is wisely planned, and in France's interest as well as Germany's her association with it is much to be desired.
