Promise Renewed

In besieged West Berlin last week, the U.S. renewed a solemn promise to Germans, East & West. "Everyone in the U.S.," said Dr. James B. Conant, the new U.S. High Commissioner in Germany, "knows that here the two contending forces of this mid-20th century stand face to face. Let me make plain the position of my Government." The U.S., said Conant, is "pledged to see to it that this city continues as an unshaken outpost of the Western world. We shall continue to insist on the free circulation within Berlin of all its inhabitants. The U.S. , is determined to keep open the lines of communication with Berlin."

The High Commissioner's first message brought fresh and timely assurance to 2,000,000 troubled West Berliners. It was also beamed to the 17 million Red-run Germans of East Germany. "As the strength of a new Europe develops," Dr. Conant said, "changes must occur. The frontiers of freedom will peacefully expand, and Berlin will no longer be an isolated citadel." East Germany some day will unite with the West "under conditions which ensure a free democratic government of your own choosing."

Shoot to Kill. Ex-Harvard President Conant could not have picked a livelier classroom for his introduction to cold-war diplomacy, nor a fitter place for his first recitation. Day & night, the German Communists were drawing tighter 'their noose around West Berlin and piling up fresh woes for doughty Mayor Ernst Reuter's West Berlin government. Last week they finished building concrete molehills across the streets leading from the East to the Western sectors. The people's police got orders to shoot to kill at border crossers, and diligently complied. Three cars carrying refugees from the East made it to sanctuary through a fusillade of bullets; but others who barreled across Schilling Bridge in two trucks were not so lucky--a driver was killed and a woman wounded.

But what had long seemed cold, calculated harassment of the Western city was beginning to wear a somewhat defensive look. The Reds had plainly become alarmed over the way West Berlin is drawing thousands out of East Germany. They had reason to worry: in the last twelve months some 150,000 East Germans have fled the Soviet zone; and the exodus is beginning to hurt Communist farms and factories.

Save the Scum. Last week Premier Otto Grotewohl appointed what West Berliners promptly labeled a "commissar for the prevention of flights"; to fill the job he dipped into the Communist penalty box and came up with Gerhart Eisler, the shifty little Comintern agent who recently lost his job as East German propaganda chief, and was presumed on the way out. He explained his long absence from the political arena without a smile: "I had to have my teeth repaired." Then he turned to the refugees. They were all "underworld characters, trash proletarians, black marketeers and scum . . ." but anyway, Eisler was going to save them from the horrors of Western imperialism.

He faced a big job. Refugees still pour into West Berlin at a rate of more than 1,000 a day; in one day this week there were 3,500--an alltime high.

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