Mile-long Car Queue In Berlin Hold-up

Chronicle (Levin), 17 June 1948, Page 5

Mile-long Car Queue In Berlin Hold-up

Eeceived Wednesday, 7 p.m. LONDON, June 16. The Daily Mail 's Berlin correspondent says the traffic queue which had piled up at tha Elbe ferry since the rtussiaiis closed the bridge on the main road iinking Berlin with the British Zone had reached a mile in length by the early hours of Wednesday. The Riissians closed the bridge on Tuesday for repairs neeessitating the traffic making a 15-mile detour to the slow old-fashioned ferry. The detour track winds through remote villages which for many months have scarcely seen a car. The Russians themselves occupied the ferry for most of the day, bringing up military vehieles and making the Western Allies' traffic wait. The Western Powers are considering ending soon the period of Germany's "unconditional surrendel'" and replacing it with a ' ' statute of occupation, ' ' which, in elfect, is an infornjal German peace treaty. The statute would be a ' ' Bill of Rights ' ' for the Gernians and would set the responsibilities and rights for the Germau Government and the Western Military Governments. Arrangemcnts have been completed to institute currency reform in Western Germany according to tlie Associated ■Press Hamburg correspondent. British army trucks liave distributed new marks all over the British Zone. Generals Robertson, Clay and Koenig conferred at Frankfurt. It is believed they discussed currency reform. Gen- ! erals Robertson and Clay conferred with the German Premiers of the> eombined zones and the bizonal eeonomie offieials, but they did not tell the Germans the date on which the new curfeney would operate.

While the leaders were diseussmg currency reform thousands of. Germans in West Germany wel'e spending their money because of a fear that it might lose value. Rationed goods and other commodities normally in good supply began disappearing from shops. The blaekmarket.,- alinost ceased throughout the Ruhr, dealers fearing that paper money might be worthless in a few hours. The U.S. State Department- stated today that the Soviet agreed to the recent American proposal for a tenPower conference on July 30 on the question of re-opening the Danube River to commerce. The Soviet by reversing its earlier stand will allow Austria to attend as a consultant and had suggested that the conference should be hqld in one of the Danubian States — Rumania, Bulgaria, . Hungary, Austria or Russian Ukraine. The conferees will be the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Bulgaria> Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.