German Industry Gets Its Orders
Since it is not in the nature of economic problems that they can be solved by military gentlemen employing rush tactics, it is not surprising that the publication of the Anglo-American plan for the level of industry in Western Germany despite French opposi- tion at last week's Three Power consultation, should have left nobody very pleased. The French representatives, presented at Lancaster House with a plan based on a Ruhr steel production of 10.7 million tons and harried at home by opposition on the Right and Left to any arrangement raising the possibility of a German military recovery, could only enter a series of reservations and retire bitterly dis- appointed. The Russian Military Governor in Germany, inevitably though less excusably, has lodged the routine protest against a breach of the Potsdam agreement. German reactions are slow in coming through, though those sections of opinion which are determined to make the worst of everything have already complained of the inability of the German authorities at Frankfurt to carry the _plan through and claimed that it will not work without still larger Allied imports of food, materials and equipment. The British public, remembering that the Potsdam agreement fixed the permitted steel production at 5.8 rrellion tons, that the agreement of March, 1946, raised it to 7.5 million tons, and that neither of them worked, will wonder why it has been raised to 10.7 million, when the actual steel output is still below even the first of these figures. It will also wonder why, valid as the new plan is in the long run, its publication could not have been delayed until November, when the Council of Foreign Ministers meets again. The answer must be that the British and American authorities attached more importance to letting the Germans know their fate, in terms both of effort required and factories to be dismantled as reparations, than to pleasing either the French or the Russians. There may have been some excuse so far as the Russians are concerned, since there is no reason to believe that they will suddenly become co-operative in November. But little is to be gained either by weakening M. Ramadier's Government or by enhancing the perfectly genuine French fears of a German recovery.
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