Shadow Over Berlin

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 5

Shadow Over Berlin

NE of the difficulties the Western nations are meeting in handling the Berlin situation is Russia’s refusal to offer ‘even a plausible excuse for the blockade. If.a man before he hits you says you have insulted him, or bustled him, or stood on his toes, or harboured dangerous thoughts about him, he may still be difficult to deal with, but you know that it is a simple case of assault. If he hits without reason or excuse you don’t quite know whether to, hit back or send for the police or call on bystanders to help’ you to hold him till he can be taken back to hospital. So the problem is to know whether Russia is larrikin, lunatic, or outlaw; taking pleasure in, starving two-and-a-half million people and alarming 200 million more; has been driven crazy by suspicion and fear; or is simply pushing and squeezing. and grabbing, in the hope that Britain and America will get out of the way to avoid a breach of the peace. It is of course not quite true that no reasons at all have been given

for the blockade. The Russians offer "technical reasons" for it; but they do not say what the reasons are, and they do not suppose for a moment that the world accepts what they say or is even interested in it. It is this deliberate mdifference to world opinion, as Harold Nicolson pointed. out the other day in a BBC broadcast, that is not merely baffling but alarming. No one thinks yet that war is coming; and as long as there is a chance of ending the tenSion by diplomatic means it, is criminal to talk of other methods. But it is not criminal to wonder how many differences so far have been removed by Anglo-American surrenders, and to point out that peace on thosé terms is not peace at all. The real test for both sides may not have come yet. If it has come, and ends in a compromise that brings us loss of face, democracy will have reason to tremble.