COMMUNIST DEMONSTRATORS AGAIN RAID CITY HALL IN SOVIET SECTOR OF BERLIN CITY ASSEMBLY PREVENTED FROM HOLDING MEETING

Grey River Argus, 7 September 1948, Page 5

COMMUNIST DEMONSTRATORS AGAIN RAID CITY HALL IN SOVIET SECTOR OF BERLIN

CITY ASSEMBLY PREVENTED FROM HOLDING MEETING

(Received September 6, at 10.45 p.m.) LONDON, September 6. Despite preparations to safeguard the Berlin City Assembly in the Soviet sector of Berlin a meet-’ ing of the Assembly to have 1 been held to-day (Monday), has been prevented. Reuter’s Berlin correspondent says Communist demonstrators to-day rushed the City Hall. They swept aside the Soviet Sector. German police, broke down the main door, and swarmed into the building ten minutes before the City Assembly meeting was due to begin.

A Fight Develops (Rec. 11.10) LONDON, Sept. 6 Reuter’s correspondent at Berlin states: The City Hall Municipal Orderlies drove back the demonstrators after they stormed up the main stairway to the main conference room. The demonstrators fought with the Civilian Guards in the lobby. Back Door Entry By Demonstrators (Rec. 11.40) LONDON, Sept. 6 Reuter’s correspondent at Berlin says: Hundreds of the demonstrators broke down a back door of the City Hall and swarmed into the building. They surrounded one newspaper correspondent. They tore a telephone that he was using from the wall. Previous Precautions LONDON, Sept. 5. Three hundred “strong arm’’ men will to-morrow guard the Berlin town hall against any Communist attempts to storm the building when the City Assqjnbly makes another attempt' to meet .in the Russian sector. The Russian authorities have refused the assembley’s request for protection. , , , | Soviet authorities have ordered the city, authorities to. stop preparations for the city elections scheduled for October in the Soviet sector of the city. _ ~ . The Red Army newspaper Taghche Ruschau, commenting on th e request for a protective force for the City Assembly, said: “It remains to be seen what reaction this intended provocation will have on the hundreds of thousands of Berliners who are suffering misery through the incapable Assembly’s fault.” The British-licensed Telegraf . declared: Democratic German administration in the Soviet sector of Berhn is not possible. In recent weeks onequarter of the legally-elected. borough mayors and city officials in the Russian sector have been replaced by members of the Communist-control-led Socialist Unity Party. . . The British Control Commission announced that 26 barges containing 4000 tons of coal are ready to leave Hamburg for Berlin in addition to trains elsewhere. The three Western commandants, in a letter to' the city administration, said that the blockade eventually would be lifted. . German communists have a Lip Council of their own, in Berlin, in an attempt to usurp the powers of the city administration, which nas been unable to sit because of Communist disturbances. The Communists met in the Town Hall and have announced that they would nieet every fortnight (as a legally elected assembly is supposed to do) , unless unforseen developments occur. this will not leave .the elected administration any alternative except to make a complete break with the Soviet sector.

Pope’s Radio Address To German Catholics PRESENT TRIALS AND BETTER POSSIBILITIES ROME, September 5. Pope Pius XII spoke in German over the Vatican Radio to German Catholics gathered at Mainz for their 72nd national conference. The Pope warned the Germans that in some regions of Germany the Catholics might have to fight to the last drop of their blood for the rights of the Catholic Church. “Many Catholics and non-Catholics desire unity of faith,” the, Pope continued, “but the Catholic Church, unyieldingly stands firm against any hint of compromise regarding the adjustment of Catholic beliefs to those of other religions, because there is only one infallible shepherd of whole truth. „ This shepherd is the C The^Pope l said that the Germans should not look at the bitter ."psery of the present, but be filled with joj at the future, which the Catholic conference would show them—a tuture which they would have to win by hard work and privation.

Religious Persecution Behind “Iron Curtain” LONDON, Sept. 5. Many of the delegates at the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam came from behind the ‘ iron curtain,” said Dr. Bernard Cockett, who represented 1 Australia at the recent council. ‘‘We received startling revelations of religious persecution! • by revolutionary Bolshevism, he added. . I Dr Cockett was formerly presi--dena of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand. Nazi Teachers Sacked by British In Western Germany (By Reece Smith, the Kemsley Empire Journalist). BERLIN, Germans have been ( running their own education in the British occupied zone of their country since January 1, 1947. On that date the British tossed them the responsibility of filling the mental canyons left by Hitler’s system. Like a father who has tossed his son in the deep end to learn to swim, Britain is standing about on the edge, ready to advise and prepared to jump m to the rescue if need be. The educational adviser to _ the Military Government, Mr R. Birley, told in an interview of British endeavours to give Germans minds of their' own. First act on the British arrival was to turn out the .Nazis a quarter of the teaching staff. Some Germans now say too many were

turned out, some say too few. So die number, may have been right. The British tried something positive by suggesting lines along which Leaching should go. By the time it ivas judged opportune to hand education back to the German authorities, the .British had all but a few thousand of the 3,000,000 children in their zone back to school. “We were within an ace of having a completely uneducated generation ivhich would have been bad in 10 io 15 years’ time,” said Mr Birley. '“There was one boy in Hamburg who did not even know what the word school meant.” German children had been appallingly cut off from knowledge of the world. Instead of laying down general principles of education when they handed it over, the British chose to work through personal contacts. About 200 education officers were deployed through the zone. Some were haVing difficulty getting their new ideas over to the local German teachers.

“Germany will not be saved by going back to before 1933”, went on Mr Birley, speaking of the need for new ideas. The British, weer trying to persuade the German teachers to choose the textbooks for their own classes, but the teachers still wanted them chosen somewhere above, and the German educational officials, extremely bureaucratic and reactionary, 'thought this new proposition deplor‘able. "But we believe the teachers should learn to think for themselves,” Mr Birley observed. Universities he found to be reactionary, but anti-Nazi. They wanted to get back to the pre-1914 world, and retire from the intellectual struggle altogether. Professors were not interested in a sound intellectual basis for the revival of their country. “The Nazis based their whole philosophy on intellectual rubbish, and the Universities should feel ashamed they let the country get into a state where it accepted it at all. We feel we have to build up a revolutionary force inside the University”. A step towards this had been the setting up of a University Commission. One leading member was a trade unionist and this was the first time in Germany that trade unionism had had anything to do*with the University, which it had hitherto regarded as hopelessly reactionary. The head bf the University Commission was also head of a German co-op movement, while the British member was Lord Lindsay, master of Balliol. The occupation authorities ostentatiously divorced themselves from this commission, leaving it to work out its own German salvation. Four principles, of legislation for primary and secondary education have been laid down, to be framed as the German administration thinks .best: — . x , I First, secondary education must be I free. Up to the present, secondary education, beginning at 10, has been extraordinarily divorced from reality, and regarded only as a preliminary to the equally unreal Universities. , Second, there must be no legislation which renders impossible the later extension of the elementary education periods up to 14 and 16. The elementary period now ends at 10 in the British zone, 14 in Berlin and 16 in the Russian zone, where parents pay contribution. Third, the status of teachers and training colleges must be raised. "Fourth, private schools should not be abolished, both because it is bad in Germany to have all education run by the" State, and because there is no wish to quarrel with the I Church.

A scholarship system will be necessary to get the best talent to the top. There is no foolproof check that the teachers are not indulging in propaganda, continued Mr Birley, but in Germany these days you do not get Nationalist propaganda over without the whole village knowing about it.” And when the whole village know, the information is bound to reach an education officer. The education system still did not reach the great problem left by Hitler, young men now from 20 to 30 to whom “Hitler gave the biggest bribe you can offer to youth; he asked them to sacrifice ttiemselves.”

Russian Method The Russian approach to re-educa-tion was quite different from the British. They believed their only hope was to work on the working people. This they did through politically reliable Germans, implementing clear directives from Moscow. “I don’t think the Russians have any regard for intellectual truth, said Mi’ Birley. ‘Theirs is not a solution to the German mental state.” The Russians had changed the German system very thoroughly, lowering the. standards of some Ox the Universities in the process, by increasing admissions. They were wholly against cultural exchanges with other countries. The Americans, whose approach was much the same as that of the British, but more centralised, were having a trying time with a very reactionary German Government in Bavaria. The French very largely ran iei education themselves, instead of through German teachers. They regarded the middle and old age groups of Germans as hopeless, and were concentrating on training the young t o T h aTi4 S °F%fch W XrTwas en,I,l OnT l gooa feature, so I am told is that the administrators in the French zone, perhaps giddy with following changes of Government in Paris, are going ahead according to a set programme of then own so that the Germans, at, least, know where they stand. In education this programme is said to be betterthan that of any of the other occupying Powers.