State of the Union

General Eisenhower, Field Marshal Montgomery and Marshal Zhukov have anxiously avoided the common ground of Berlin during the past four weeks. That was typical of the state of Big Power affairs. When the three did meet at a session of the Allied Control Council, they discussed minor matters. In Washington and London, the feeling grew that the Control Council just would not work.

On lower administrative levels, the story of the crisis was shaped by day-to-day encounters of officers who often disliked each other, by the day-to-day problems and incompatibilities of routine occupation business. Last fortnight, Berlin's Kommandatura met to transact some of that business. Facing each other across an oblong table in the large, high-windowed council room were youngish, earnest American Major General James Gavin; tall, leathery British Major General E. P. Nares; fattish French Major General Geoffrey de Beauchesne; and an able, hard-hitting Russian, Colonel General Alexander Gorbatov. Each had an interpreter at his side. Around the room sat some 30 experts and advisers. Major question on the agenda: Berlin's food supply.

The Russian announced briskly that he had not enough meat to continue supplying the city. Unless the U.S. and Britain delivered their share soon, he would henceforth supply only the Soviet sector. Heatedly his colleagues pointed out that they could contribute their shares only if the Russians speeded up the railroads under their control. Said the Russian: every effort was being made, and anyway, railroads were not his business, while food was. Said the Frenchman: France would start meat deliveries soon, but not to Berlin. The Russian sniffed. The American recalled that U.S. authorities had already delivered 9,000 tons of dressed beef to the Russians at the Bavarian frontier. The Russian sniffed again. The matter was not settled.

The meeting wore on. Interpreters got mixed up, translated into the wrong language, argued with one another. In more than the literal sense, the four Allies around the table spoke different languages. When the question of "democratic" trade-union elections came up, the Western Allies stalled. They had long since found out that the Soviets had their own peculiar definition of "democratic." The Russian glibly championed the cause of labor against the Briton, who represented a Labor Government.

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