Invitation to Infection
HERR ULBRICH CS offer to settle the problem of access to West Berlin by the establish- ment of an arbitration board 'for safeguarding peaceful traffic' may be thought of as a con- cession in East Germany, but will hardly be so regarded anywhere else. In the first place, it is conditional on the withdrawal of allied troops from West Berlin, and on the recognition of the East German Government—two considerable concessions through which the Western powers would concede the substance of the Soviet case over the Berlin problem. In the second place, it is quite different from that international super- vision of access to West Berlin which has been suggested by Britain and America. The Soviet scheme (it was first put forward in a com- munication from Mr. Gromyko at Geneva) con- tains no guarantee which could possibly satisfy the Western powers, let alone the population of West Berlin. All such an arrangement would, mean is that the access routes would be under East German supervision, and the West would have to rely on the Pankow Government's will- ingness to abide by an arbitration which could never be enforced, since Herr Ulbricht's police would be in occupation of the disputed terrain. To talk of moderation in connection with such an offer is -ridiculous. The only justification for regarding the East German Prime Minister's speech as a concession is that it is more of a con- cession that he has so far consented to make. But this is rather like saying that a man is in good health because he turns out merely to have diphtheria when he had been thought to be suffering from plague. Unhappily, it is East Ger- many that is stricken with the plague of tyranny, and Herr Ulbricht who desires to spread the terror of the disease.
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