Bone in the Throat Commander Sir Stephen King-Hall The Other
Exodus Walid Khalidi, Erskine B. Childers Ordeal In Court Kit Mouat Cuban Aftermath
D. W. Brogan, G. Alvarez, Philip Toynbee
Not Good Enough John Margeson, Kenneth J. Robinson
The Evans Case Dr. R. M. Pigache
A Bolo Sir Linton Andrews
Seven Years' Hard Frank Littler
BONE IN THE THROAT
SIR,-'--Your opinion that it is better to talk about Berlin with Mr. K before we are driven to talk about it with Herr Ulbricht (as we shall have to do if we do not first try out Mr. K) will be that of many in Great Britain. There appears to be one point on each side in this dispute which is not negotiable. We cannot abandon the West Berliners, and Mr. K will not abandon his policy of keeping Germany divided and making this division as permanent as possible.
If we are prepared to give Mr. K his minimum we shall find out whether he will give us ours. But to give him what he wants means that we have to per- suade Adenauer and perhaps Kennedy to accept the Oder-Neisse line and the existence of East Germany as a sovereign State. By placing UN troops in Berlin and as guardians of a corridor to the West plus other arrangements we could do a lot to make the West Berliners safer than they aie at present, and we should make it our business to find out speedily to what extent Mr. K will or will not co-operate with us in what would be a more up-to-date and realistic four-power (or UN) guarantee for Berlin.
I must, however, add that, painful as it may be to have to say it, the parallel you draw between our undertaking to Poland (given without consulting the General Staff) and our obligations to West Berliners is dangerously inexact.
We could not help Poland when the aggression occurred, but we could and did defeat the aggression in due course, without, as. it turned out, doing much good to the Poles. But the result of a nuclear war would be disastrous to all of us. To imagine other- wise is to deceive ourselves.—Yours faithfully, Road, SW)
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