Safe to Leave

After the long, perilous winter, spring finally arrived in West Berlin last week. Billowing sails dotted the placid Wannsee; plump matrons nibbled pastry in the sun at open-air cafes along the broad Kurfuerstendamm; amidst budding willows in the Grunewald forest, lovers strolled. Even the Russians were infected with spring fever: at the Soviet war memorial just inside WTest Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate, the two old T-34 tanks on permanent display were given a coat of bright green paint by a crew of Red army soldiers.

More important, the crew's Soviet colleagues were still avoiding trouble along the Autobahnen and in the air corridors. For the third straight week, U.S., British and French commercial planes and military convoys moved into Berlin without harassment. There were MIGs in the skies, all right, but they were en route to spring maneuvers in East Germany.

To many, the lull seemed a deliberate Soviet effort to warm the diplomatic atmosphere for the new round of negotiations on Berlin opening in Washington this week between Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the Kremlin's new Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin. Moscow was aware that new U.S. proposals on Berlin were being circulated among the Western allies, obviously did not want to rock the boat until it saw what the West had to offer. In any case, the U.S. was still determined to retain allied access to the free city, and the Soviets showed no signs of abandoning their demands that the West get out. But the apparent willingness of Moscow to keep talking was an encouraging sign.

On hand to offer his advice about the talks last week was retired General Lucius D. Clay, President Kennedy's personal emissary, whose fulltime task in Berlin was over. Clay's seven months in the free city as the on-the-spot symbol of U.S. support had not passed entirely smoothly. His suggestions for tough dis plays of U.S. strength in Berlin were often pigeonholed in favor of more cautious advice from the State Department; his direct line to the White House some times upset the military and diplomatic chain of command, to the obvious anger of U.S. officers in Europe. In the current calm, it seemed time to bring him home.

General Clay felt much the same way. Flying in to Washington, he said: "In the improved atmosphere, there's more hope of negotiations being successful than there is in a period of danger and tension . . . If Berlin is ever in real trouble, I will be back one way or another--you can be sure of that." To the President, Clay was happy to report that Berlin showed every sign of surviving any onslaught short of outright siege. All the dire predictions that the war of nerves itself would paralyze the city had proved false. Savings accounts now totaled $350,750,000, a new record for West Berlin; twice as many tourists were flooding the city (many to view the ugly Wall itself) as came at the same time last year; the once-worrisome population exodus was now ended. Said Clay: "West Berliners have recovered from the shock of the Wall ... It is the healthiest-looking withering city you ever saw."

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