Business Trip

Blueshirted young Communists from the World Youth Festival invaded West Berlin again last week, but this time it was no innocent visit to gobble free food, gape at well-stocked department stores, see the exhibits, color television, radio shows and movies the Western allies had set up for their Communist callers. This time 14,000 crossed the border on business: to stir up hatred against the West.

Their Red leaders wanted to do something to break up the blueshirts' fraternizing with free Berliners.

At factories in the Russian sector, word was passed around one day that all F.D.J.

(Free German Youth) members should quit work at 2:30 p.m. to join in. Truckloads of blueshirts came from camps, others poured by trolley and subway into assembly points along Berlin's east-west border. In ones and twos the Reds drifted casually into the Western sectors, suddenly congealed into solid, marching columns in three separate districts.

Peace Fighters. "Peace!" "Hail to Stalin!" "Ami [Americans] go home!" cried the Reds, flinging propaganda leaflets left & right. Angry West Berliners rushed to help the outnumbered police. Cried a housewife: "Chase them back! Get at them!" Shopkeepers hastily put up their shutters.

The blueshirts hurled rocks, battled furiously with feet and fists, were finally driven back with fire hoses. Seven police and scores of blueshirts were injured (the blueshirts later were awarded special "peace medals" by their leaders); 116 blueshirts were clapped into jail.

But even after the battle, inquisitive blueshirts still crossed the line to look at Western freedom, and were still warmly welcomed, fed and entertained. Eleven youngsters chosen at random were whisked off to lunch with U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy and his wife.

At Ease. Mrs. Me Cloy's fluent German and friendly manner put the suspicious kids at ease. "Don't talk about this visit when you go home," she warned as they left. "That could be dangerous for you." Replied the blueshirts: "We just have to tell somebody, and we know we can trust our parents--so we'll just tell them."

After lunch, McCloy showed up at RIAS, West Berlin's main radio station, and freely answered political questions fired at him by 300 assembled blueshirts. At the end of the two-hour session Peter Nellen, a member of the West German Bundestag, put a question to them: If the blueshirts were at home, would Gen. Vasily I. Chuikov, East Germany's Russian boss, face them in similar fashion? There was an embarrassed silence, a little laughter, and then a cry of "No!" In Berlin's torn city, kindness, coolness and candor had proved to be the most artful propaganda of all.

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