Waiting

There were no cheers in Berlin last week. There were not even many smiles. During the ten months of grim siege, Berliners' hopes had been mocked too often by false rumors. Berliners would believe the news of the blockade's end when they saw trains and trucks rolling into Berlin again from the West.

In Potsdamer Platz last week, an old man creakily stooped to retrieve a cigarette butt. He expressed the city's skepticism: "New rumors, eh? Ha, they're all just like soap bubbles--too shiny to be true." Near Tempelhof airdrome, where the U.S. and British planes were still droning in, a student scoffed: "The Russians are bluffing again."

Berliners noted that, despite high-level peace parleys, the local Russians were being their usual selves. But experts in Russian behavior professed to detect a slight softening around the edges.

One day last week, Russian officers and soldiers appeared at three canal locks inside the British sector, and ordered the lock keepers to stop all barges which could not show Russian papers. They based their case on the fact that the barge-licensing office had been in Soviet territory before the East and West sectors set up their own city governments.

Groups of husky British MPs rushed to the locks in armored cars. After four days of discussion between a Russian general and a British brigadier, the Russians agreed not to interfere any more. For the Russian retreat the Communist press had an odd explanation. The Russians, it solemnly assured its readers, had staged the affair in order to re-establish diplomatic contact with the Western Powers.

Meanwhile, the Russians established some more contacts. Tommy-gun-toting German police from the Russian zone raided a farm on Berlin's outskirts on the British-Soviet line. They made off with 38 cows, 34 horses, twelve sheep, eight hogs, three typewriters, three telephones, a set of china. When three British MPs and two British-sector German cops protested, they were arrested. At week's end the three Britons were returned with apologies (the two Germans had escaped). But the Russians kept the plunder.

In the sky over Berlin, the airlift planes still droned on.

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