THE CRUCIAL TEST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26627, 25 November 1947, Page 4

THE CRUCIAL TEST

To-day in London the Foreign Ministers of the four Great Powers will meet in what may prove to be the last opportunity to prevent a permanent and perhaps disastrous division of Europe on a line through Germany. At the conference of Foreign Ministers‘in Moscow earlier this year the four principals arose after seven weeks of wrangling with nothing accomplished but a clarification of the principal points of disagreement, and since these included almost every important item in the proposed German peace treaty, the prospect of an amicable conclusion to the present talks cannot be regarded as being bright. For several weeks past the deputies to the Foreign Ministers have been attempting to devise a procedure on the German and Austrian treaties that would enable their masters to break the deadlock which brought the Moscow Conference to an end, but even at this late date there has been no report to indicate that'their efforts have been successful. The Russians, according to a recent issue of the Economist, have proposed that the agenda should open with discussions for procedure on the peace conference as a whole and on the provision of a political regime for Germany, leaving the vexed problems of reparations and the Austrian treaty until later. As the Economist points out, however, little purpose can be served in discussing forms of a government for a united Germany if its economic basis cannot be agreed upon. And the task of planning the future of Germany as an economic entity is likely to prove the crucial one.

At the Moscow Conference all fourdelegates agreed that the economic unity of Germany in terms of the Potsdam Agreement was. desirable, but each stipulated conditions irreconcilable with the national policies of the o'thers. Russian acquiescence was conditional on reparations -being taken from Germany’s current production, a proviso which neither the United States nor Great Britain was prepared to accept until a balanced German economy had been built up that would relieve the Western Allies of the huge financial burdens they are now carrying. The French delegate was prepared to agree provided the Saar was integrated into the French economic-financial system and the resources of the Ruhr were made available for the reconstruction of France. Failure of the Foreign Ministers to agree on the vital issue of economic fusion led to the abandonment of all further discussions on the amount of reparations that Germany should be expected to pay and the level on which German industry should be fixed. Reports that have since been published suggest there appears to be little possibility that the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, the

United States and France will approach to-day’s discussions with any intention of sanctioning the restoration of Germany’s heavy industry to a level that would make the payment of the Soviet’s reparation demands possible. That would simply be forging the weapons for another German war of aggression. If unanimity is to be reached on the future of Germany, Russia will have to modify substantially her earlier demands, and if her statesmen refuse to do this the Western Powers will have no alternative but to accept the economic and political division of Germany as a fact, and seek to reorganise the recovery of the western zones on that basis.