Watch on the Rhine

The swift grey waters of the Rhine last week divided the realm of European Communism. The Kremlin had faced a choice between vanquished Germany and victorious, allied France. With icy calm, it had chosen Germany.

"The time has come," Molotov had said in Paris, "when we should discuss the fate of Germany." He held not one but two fates in store for the Reich. Most of his plan presented Russia as the great and only champion of German independence. As though the Russians had never raised the cry of vengeance, Molotov preached an unvengeful peace, called for economic reconstruction, demanded a centralized democratic government rather than a federalized one (a unified Germany would be much more easily Communized). His most sensational point: the Ruhr must not be separated from Germany.

Right Bank. But at the same time, Molotov demanded ten billion dollars' worth of reparations (to be taken, contrary to previous agreement, partly out of current German production) and declared that an actual peace treaty should not be granted until the Germans had established a satisfactorily democratic government. Byrnes countered that Germany would have to know the kind of peace she would be up against before she could develop such a government. He suggested, in effect, that the economic reconstruction and the centralized government called for in Molotov's plan be started immediately by 1) lifting of zonal boundaries, 2) establishment of a central administration to which even the French had now agreed. But Molotov, despite his grand promises, refused. His stand forced Byrnes and Bevin to announce that the U.S. and British zones would merge. This should complete Germany's long-emerging division into an Eastern and a Western Reich.

Some Germans wondered why Molotov would not let them have an advance on the wonderful future he had promised. Said one Berlin office worker: "If Molotov is really interested in Germany, I don't understand his refusal to drop zonal frontiers." But most of the press on the right (German) bank of the Rhine completely ignored this purposeful Molotov paradox and played up Russia as Germany's best friend. Typical sample: the Liberal Democratic Party's Der Morgen headlined: "What Molotov demands for Germany" as contrasted with what the Western powers "demand from Germany." Said a German official in the Russian zone: "It has never before been expressed with such clarity by an official foreign authority that Germany cannot live without ... the Ruhr."

Left Bank. On the left bank of the Rhine, dismay and confusion marched in Communism's ranks. Thorez & comrades, who had campaigned, along with the rest of France, for a Ruhr detached from Germany, found themselves suddenly in clear opposition to Russia. Said one member of the French Politbureau: " 'It never rains but it pours' was not a proverb invented by Karl Marx, but as far as we are concerned, it might as well have been. After the constitutional rebuff, the near defeat at the elections, last week's slapping down in the Chamber, and now this."

In the Cabinet, the Reds supported President-Premier Bidault's stand opposing the Molotov plan. But as good Communists, they knew that Stalin was still Stalin and Molotov his prophet. Its faith unshaken, but its vital gift for rationalization badly disrupted, Communist Humanite babbled: ". . . no insoluble divergence. Subsequent discussions will explain these questions more clearly." An emergency Communist line was appearing, to the effect that Russia was merely trying to keep perfidious Albion's claws off the Ruhr. French Communists would have to take comfort from the thought that their present distress was only a tactical interlude in Communism's grand strategy, and that whatsoever benefited Mother Russia would benefit all her Communist children in the end.

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