Divided Germany
The scrutiny of the statements passing between the East and West German political leaders on the subject of an All-German Consti- tuent Council is likely to be a profitless task, so far as practical measures are concerned. This exchange, which began last Novem- ber with an invitation sent by the East German Premier, Herr Grotewohl, to Dr. Adenauer, and was continued by a statement to the Press by the West German Chancellor on January 15th rejecting point by point the various barbed offers from the East, has been taken a stage further this week by an appeal which purports to come from the East German Parliament to the Federal Parliament at Bonn. It still remains in form a mere propagandist manoeuvre, intended to put Dr. Adenauer in the wrong. The East German "appeal " still retains the impossible condition that East and West Germany, despite their disparity in population (18 mil- lion in the East against more than 40 million in the West) should be equally represented in a constituent assembly ; it brazenly offers to extend to all Germany the blessings of the " law for the protec- tion of peace," which is in fact a catalogue of restrictions on individual liberty ; it offers to cut down the menacing East German police, but only on the condition that the West Germans do the same with their inoffensive force ; and it offers the freest possible elections, without giving any guarantee whatever that the usual peculiar Communist definition of a free election will be dropped. There would be no point in spending time on this ambiguous nonsense but for the fact that its underlying motive remains at this time, as it was when the first offer was made, the pursuit of the overriding Communist aim of preventing the rearmament of Western Germany. The most sinister phrase in the latest East German pronouncement is one in which it is asserted that the remilitarisation of Western Germany must inevitably lead to German civil war. The short answer is that civil war is no more inevitable than any other war, unless one side is determined to have it. But in this case the determination of the East German Government is not within its own control. As a statement from East Berlin this latest offer has little significance. As a statement by a Russian satellite it must be taken more seriously. But the one thing it cannot possibly lead to is a move to put West Germany in the slightest degree within the influence of the East German Com- munists, who this week have come as close as any " peace-loving " Russian satellite can come to threatening war.
