THE COST OF DEFENCE
Mr. Bevin went to The Hague this week to attend a meeting of the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty on defence questions. The deputies of the Foreign Ministers of the Atlantic Treaty Powers have also been meeting. But the two defence organisations in Western Europe are not completely integrated, and this is a case in which the advantages to be secured by integration are overwhelmingly obvious. Rightly or wrongly, many people in Berlin and Western Germany are profoundly uneasy about immediate Communist intentions and, in particular, about the trouble-making potential of the numerous and well-trained People's Police from the Eastern Zone. An AmeriCan spokesman has already forecast a period of unrest in the autumn, and it appears likely that an increase in both the numbers and the mobility of the West German police will be allowed. Short of the general war which nobody expects—but in which the Com- munists would at present possess an enormous advantage in Western Europe—there is a clear possibility of frontier troubles in Germany of the kind which could to some extent distract the attention of the Western Powers from larger clashes in the Far East. What those possible troubles call for is not only adequate Western armed force, but, perhaps more important, quick thinking and quick action by a single smoothly-working organisation.
