DR. ADENAUER'S TASK
NEXT Wednesday, when the new West German Parliament meets for the first time at Bonn—ten years to a week Since Germany plunged the world in war—will be a momentous day in the history of post-war Germany. The new Bundestag is comparable in some ways with the Reichstag of the 'twenties, but it is spared the disastrous multiplicity of parties whose incalculable associations and dissociations then robbed every Government of the hope of stability. Dr. Adenauer, it is true, has to add to his own Christian Democrats the Free Democrats and the German Party to ensure himself the narrow majority which 208 votes out of 402 secures, but unless the German Party, the Right Wing of the Coali- tion, exacts an unreasonable price for its support the bloc should be in no serious danger, particularly as the only organised Opposition will consist of the Socialists. Their programme, as stated by their leader, Dr. Schumacher, on Tuesday, contains sixteen points, of which the socialisation of basic and key industries is in so sharp a contrast to the free enterprise policy to which Dr. Adenauer's Minister of Economics, Dr. Erhard, is wedded as to make any idea of an Adenauer-Schumacher coalition untenable. As to other Ministers, the assumption of the portfolio for Refugees and Eastern Affairs by Dr. Jacob Kaiser, who is himself a refugee from the Eastern Zone, is notable ; in the matter of the settlement of the seven million refugees he will be under heavy pressure from the Socialist Opposi- tion. The absence of Herr Arnold, the influential Premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, from the new Cabinet is in many ways to be regretted, but Herr Arnold is most successfully holding together a coalition government in a province of twelve million people, and he may well feel that he can do his best work where he is ; none the less the Cabinet would be the stronger for some representative of the Catholic trade unionists who form the Left Wing of the C.D.U.
The immensity of the tasks that confront Dr. Adenauer, and a consciousness of what his success or failure may mean for all Ger- many—not merely the West—should secure him in advance the cordial sympathy of every good European. He will have to hold In check the rising nationalism in Germany, in which he will have
• the full support of the Socialists, without alienating the Right Wing parties, whom he cannot afford to antagonise completely. On one question, indeed, dismantling, he will have the support of all sections of the Diet, a fact which cannot fail to strain relations between the new Government and the Allied authorities seriously. The incident at the Ruhr Chcmie works at Oberhausen on Wednesday was ominous. Reason and restraint in this case will be as much needed on one side as on the other. At the outset, moreover, one grave problem will need firm handling at once. Nothing is more disturbing than the evidence forthcoming in the past week of the existence of an organised campaign in Western Germany, now that licensing of the Press by the Allied authorities ends, for the suppression of demo- cratic newspapers and their replacement by journals of a markedly nationalistic trend, often under the same editors and staff as before the German defeat. This is made possible by the fact that in most cases the plant by which the papers are printed has remained in the hands of " the old gang," though control of the conduct of the papers has not. Now the economic screw can be turned against the demo- cratic papers till existence is made impossible for them. General Robertson said truly on Tuesday that the German people could refuse to buy ultra-nationalist papers. They can, but it is by no means certain that they will, and the power of such papers for evil could be immense. The interpretation of the doctrine of the freedom of the Press may be one of Dr. Adenauer's first problems and one of the hardest. Another, very different, regarding which no imme- diate action seems practicable, is the menacing organisation of the German police in the Russian Zone in para-military formations.
