Revival of Germany?

Secretary of State Byrnes saw and stated the importance to world peace of a revived, united Germany. He failed to emphasize the fact that a revived, united Germany would only be endurable within the matrix of a revived, united Europe. Anything short of that sends a cold chill through the veins of Europeans sick to death of the monotonous regularity with which German revival and unity end up in German militarism and aggression.

Last fortnight Washington Post Editor Herbert Elliston returned to the U.S. and reported on what he had seen of the startling lack of U.S. progress in reviving Germany. The Post followed up with an editorial on the same theme:

"The only alternative to the Soviet program of intransigent separatism and Russification of Germany is to accept. . . the challenge. For so long have we let the Russians go ahead with their program that by this time they . . . have got a head start over the Western world. . . . Our only hope of combatting the Russian campaign is to use our resources in building up the non-munitions industry of western Germany. There is a long way to go. So moribund have we been that the economic activity in the British and American zones is nowhere even near the low level permissible under the tattered Potsdam accord. It is because of this tardiness--resulting from our unreciprocated faithfulness to the Potsdam agreement--that a . . . plan has become essential.

"The goal is to end the partition and goad the Russians into cooperation in the treatment of Germany as an economic whole. If that, however, is not the result, a plan would still be of immense value."

No Plan. Last week TIME'S Washington Bureau asked the office of Assistant Secretary of State Major General John H. Hilldring, the official primarily responsible for the success of the American occupation, whether the U.S. had worked out with the British a specific plan for revitalization of the Ruhr. How many tons of coal had the U.S. targeted for the next twelve months in the Ruhr? How many tons of steel? How many factories, repaired, restored and reconverted from armament to useful production? What were the U.S. and Britain planning to contribute to get the program going? What exports did the U.S. expect, and how would they be allocated?

A "no" to question No. 1 washed out all the other questions. The bald fact is that no one in the State Department has yet sat down with the British to work out execution of the policy the two countries agreed to in August. Nor has the State Department even begun to spell out the specific U.S. objectives under the Byrnes policy. The only effort to tackle revitalization of the Ruhr so far has been the interzonal agreements on communications and administration, between Lieut. General Lucius D. Clay and the British, which were announced in Germany last fortnight.

Only a Blueprint. General Clay's broad operational instructions have been unchanged since last year's Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1067, which is nothing more than a blueprint for faithfully executing the Potsdam agreement on the assumption that Russia, France and Britain were going to do the same.

Assistant Secretary Hilldring's advisers agree that the British have been completely unable to get smoke pouring out of the Ruhr stacks, and that if the policy stated boldly by Byrnes is to be anything but a grim failure, it must be supported, at least through its critical initial stages, by U.S. resources, food and know-how.

So far the State Department has not even begun to work out a blueprint on which it can ask Congress for the necessary authority to commit U.S. resources. The only U.S. resources now available are a few hundred millions in the War Department appropriation to provide relief in the U.S. zone this year.

Assistant Secretary of War Howard C. Petersen, War Department member of SWNCC (State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee), said he had no knowledge of any State Department effort to get what Editor Elliston calls a "plan" written. But Petersen defended the State Department on the grounds that the Byrnes policy was still young. He disclosed, however, that War Department representatives on SWNCC's staff had, although it was not their function, started a draft rewrite of 1067, and that the draft was now in a SWNCC subcommittee.

Last week the bigger problem, economic unification of Europe, came before the U.N. Russia, interested in delaying peace rather than in promoting it, promptly balked. The issue was raised by U.N.'s Economic & Social Council in an awesome, 450-page report on Europe's economy. Recommended: integration of Europe's economy under an all-European Economic Commission (in effect, an economic United States of Europe). Russian Delegate Nikolai I. Feonov denounced the plan as "not very desirable to Russia," implied that it was a capitalist plot "to make good profits."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.