A Rival to Bonn
The establishment of an East German Government in she Russian Zone, which now seems to be immediately impending, is considerably belated. It was generally supposed that this develop- ment would synchronise with the institution of the West German Government at Bonn. Why was it postponed ? Possibly because the Russians hoped the Bonn experiment would break down at the Outset, in which case things could go on as they are in the east. But Bonn having made a distinctly auspicious start, the danger of Germans in the cast looking hopefully in that direction became serious. Hence the demand, marked by the usual assiduously stimu- lated spontaneity, for an " All-German " Government, with its seat in Berlin. Nearly everything about this is spurious—the pretence that the Bonn Government is unrepresentative and " reactionary " and imposed by the Western Allies ; the pretence that its creation is a breach of the Potsdam agreement, which the Russians nullified from the first by refusing to carry out its basic provision, the treat- ment of Germany as a single economic unit ; the pretence that a gcvernment—apparcntly to be nominated, not elected—in the Russian Zone, which contains less than a third of the population of Germany, can function as an All-German Government. If the new Government does take shape it will have no effect whatever in the rest of Germany, which is completely severed, by Russian action, from the Russian Zone. It is likely to be based on the so-called Socialist Unity Party (in reality Communist) and the so-called People's Council (which, however, has always stood for an elected Parliament) and the Russians will probably enough signalise its appearance by real or specious concessions to the population. The co-existence of two govern- ments is calculated to emphasise the division between East and West Germany, and if the scat of the Eastern Government is to be Berlin, all hope of the unification of that city. agreed on at the last Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers must be abandoned for the present.
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