Keeping Cool

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 475, 30 July 1948, Page 5

Keeping Cool

HE only good news from |. Berlin as we write this note ~ is that both sides are keeping cool. The lack of heat is in fact marked enough to be uncanny; not. exactly alarming; not in itself suspicious; but so unusual that many people will be disturbed by it and wonder what it means. But the simplest explanation is the best. There is nothing to get excited about. Each side, now, knows what the other is doing, and why, and while that does not lessen the gravity of the crisis it leaves nothing for the sensation-mongers to exploit. In other words we are past the stage of "How dare you?" and "What do you mean?" and arrived at that dangerous point at which a push or a bump could start the fighting. But if the coolness means neither peace nor war it extends the time in which peace is still possible. And the best hope of peace, if the lull continues, is the absence on one side or the other of any sufficient cause for wat. However annoying it may be to the Russians to.have the Western nations in Berlin it is not a matter of life or death to them to get the

city into their own hands. How‘ever committed the Western nations are to staying in, now when the Russians have tried to shoulder them out and they have ‘declared to the world that they will not go, they certainly don’t wish to go to war on a face-sav-ing issue alone. Both sides will fight if they must, but if they can ‘find a saner way than war they will take it-unless the situation really is that Russia has decided ‘to take what she now thinks the best hour for fighting her way through to her goal. If that is-the case the challenge will be ac‘cepted; and we must not allow "ourselves to think that. it is beyond the range of’ possible de---velopments. But we can place it "among the probable issues only if we suppose that Russia is already mad with ambition and the sense of power-a difficult supposition however anxious or sus"picious we may be.