OU take the tube train perhaps:

from Thalmann Platz, in Ber-

lin’s Eastern sector, and get out

at the Zoo station:

~ You need to show no papers,
to have no special pass. But for
about six cents you. have passed
from one world into another.

For the Eastern sector is part
of the German Democratic Re-

public.

And the Western sectors are
being quite consciously made (in
the words of the Americans) into
a shopwindow of the “western way
of life’ right in the middle of
the socialist world.

One must take West Berlin,
therefore, at its masters own
valuation.

As I emerged from the Zoo
station in my quest for Western
civilization, a furtive and be-
draggled young man leaning on a
bicycle, offered me Western
marks at a cut rate.

When I said No, he offered me
a selection of lewd postcards. He
was still ‘offering when I walked
away.

The bicycle, clearly, was for
rapid retreat in case of trouble.

After the, black market came
the kiosks.

There is one at the entrance _

.\te the station. It really tells
you all you need to know about
the great battle of our ‘times
between the ideas of cate
and socialism.

Side by side on display were @
West German magazine with a
full-length picture of Goebbels on
its cover, and another with a
Hollywood starlet exhibiting her
thighs.

“Red Agents in Our Midst” was
the main heading on one maga-
zine. “Scandals, Murders, Crime,”
was the stréamer over another.

Then there was the straight
pornography. The French contri-
bution to this Western shop win-
dow appeared to be a selection of
pornographic magazines which
are not even permitted to be pub-
licly displayed in Paris.

They jostled with some pretty
crude native West German stuff
—the most public display of smut
I or you are likely to have seen
anywhere.

‘This attempt to debauch and
demoralize is extended into the
beoekshops as well.

Bvery anti-Russian book ever
published has been translated into
German and crammed into the
Berlin bookshops. And the ex-
Nazis of Germany have added a
few of their own.

“Forever Amber” is there, of
course. So is a work by Dr. Buch-

Berlin:

shop window

of the West

By DEREK KARTUN

Emst Reuter, mavor of West Berlin, confers with U.S.

U.S. Defense Secretary George C. Marshall in the Pentagon.

man, of Moral Rearmament. So
are the autobiographies of , the
Nazi generals and some of Gra-
ham Green’s Catholic pessimism.

In the theatres they are show-
ing Hollywood gangster stuff.

In the night clubs you can hire
a “taxi-girl” for dancing.

And if you want to see a de-
cent film or play or opera you
must cross into the Eastern sec-
tor, where a dazzling cultural re-
vival is in full blossom.

‘To make that more difficult
and keep the West Berliners’
noses buried in sex and vio-

lence, the West sector authori- —

ties recently prohibited the post-
ing up in their area of the
Eastern theatre programs.

I walked down the Kurfursten-_

dam. Today, believe it or not, it

is the most luxurious shopping |

centre in Europe. ~
All the shops are new and
luxuriously appointed. “They are
crammed . with goods of the
choicest kinds—at crazy prices.
Here. and there are splendid
cafes serving coffee and cream
cakes to immaculate men and
women who appear to have little
enough to do with their time.
The food shops are full of ra-

x

Sc EB ag

tion-free food which working peo-
ple cannot afford. You can buy
bananas bythe hundredweight,
chocolate by the sackful,
unlimited. |

You can buy American cars,
refrigerators, luxurious furniture.

And immediately behind -all
this lie mountains of untouched
rubble.’ Among the rubble 300,-
000 unemployed—more than in
the whole of Berlin in the 1932
crisis—are rooting and scrabbl-
ing for food.

The Western Sanaindae be-
ing a shop-window and ‘nothing
else, has nothing to offer these un-
fortunate people, nor those who
manage to find work at miserable
wages.

For West Berlin is a Nazi-style

paradise.

@ Anyone in East Berlin. who
steals a bicycle, swindles his
partner, murders ‘his ‘neigh-
bor or simply tires of his
wife has a neat way out of
his troubles.

@ He takes the tube: over to the
Americans and presents him- -
self as a “democratic fugi-
tive’ from “Red terror.”

He then joins:one of the so-
called “freedom” movements

‘in the Western sector, and

liquor ,

venient
‘American-paid spies and age}ts

promptly’ opens a shop, a
brothel ‘or a quiet line on the
black market. 4

There are thousands of such
people crowding West | Berlin
now like flies on a dung-heap.

It must-be the densest concen-
tration of crooks, debauchees and
Nazis that can be’ found any-
where.

And it is not Arsine that the
correspondents of Western néws-
papers who are stationed in Ber-
lin. find plenty of anti-Soviet
stories of the most unsavory kind
when fhey dig among all this.

Thus, Berlin has become in our
day a centre of poison propa-
ganda.

1

‘It is also an’ unbelievably con-
launching-ground for

of all descriptions.

And it is an elaborate attempt
to seduce artists, technicians and
intellectuals of all kinds away
from the German Democratic Re-
public by offering them the tinsel
luxury to which many of them
were accustomed.

Fabulous salaries are being of-
fered to university lecturers, en-
gineers, film stars and directors—

not because the West need
but because the West doesn’
the East to have them. —

turers in vetinary subjects
Berlin’s famous Humbolt
. sity (in the Eastern sector
were offered, and accepted,
tastically high salaries by |
rival university set UP _ in
Western sector.

bought — despite the face
vetinary subjects are not
in the Western university a |

to strip the Republic of i 4
mien.

is not proving a success.
Americans keep up the at aus
with dogged determination. 3

they cling so tenaciously ten
Berlin foeuolts

I heard of the case of six

waiver
) who

mer od
They were hired — OF ao
a1}

aa

of
It was simply a way ts key

This sordid little trade in]
le nyt

It is one of the reasons W

Those Germans who ~ nut
them are fully aware of
guilt against their own people a

And this accounts for the nD
teria in the West Berlin pre wont

“The offensive policy to
the liberation of the Soviet ‘on
—because this is the cond ay
for the reunification of G&” YS /
—cannot be conducted ony
talks,” writes a certain ©
Rager in the American-lice!
Tagesspiegel of West Berlin. om

“We ihave to act eve

. If the occupation ee,
ont: find a solution. then.”
to examine what the pop ple”
itself. can do wherever. poe

It is a threat that a child ¥°
understand. ; ;

This, then, is West perl
Bananas, ‘brothels and: ieee
An exhibition of what the %
American brand of We
civilization is really like *
most naive and revealing *
of propaganda one ever

In the night-clubs, th
tight skirts will tell you
stories of Eastern Germany;
are the same stories tha),
press in the Western count
has been peddling for yeat® F

Whether the press got |
from the night-clubs of Be™
whether the process was revers
I do not pretend to know:

But having seen what ic.
German Democratic ReP¥ ub
really like, I know that
stories are worthy of their OF

Rumania creates century-o

‘By JOHN GIBBONS
CERNAVODA (on the > Danube)

HAVE just been watching the

mammoth jaws of electrically
driven excavators building the
Danube-Black ‘Sea Canal, which
will link the sea with the heart
of Europe.

For centuries, ships have made.

a 350-mile tortuous river journey .

from the Rumanian \city of Cer-
navoda to Constanta on the coast.
Now they will sail 50 miles by
canal, bringing the industry. of
two vast regions 300 miles nearer
one another. ‘

I saw the canal being built
practically push-button style, with
dozens of Soviet-made, electric-
ally-driven excavators, |

fleets of

Soviet motor lorries and railway |

trucks made in the Urals,

Precisely because of - Soviet
equipment the building of the
canal is strictly a non-laborer job,
the iron jaws of the excavators,
probably the most powerful in use
anywhere, scoop up three tons of
earth at a time.

The only picks I saw were pneu-
matic picks and the only shovels
—those of the laborers trimming
up in the wake of the excavators.

At Midia, Black Sea end of the
site, where a new town and port

are rising, conveyors feed cement
and ballast into concrete mixers

~™ which in turn pour the concrete

into moulds for massive 15-ton
- concrete blocks.

These blocks, which meaty the
facing for the three-mile long
mole and the basin walls, are
hoisted by crane into rail trucks
and at the receiving end are again
hooked up and ALORE into posi-
tion.

Indeed, the only handwork in
this entire process is that of shov-
elling the dry concrete on to the
conveyor feeding the mixer.

@

As distinct from the Suez and
Panama canals, duilt mainly on

the laborious toll of colonial work- —

ers, Rumania’s Danube-Black Sea
Canal, similar to the great pro-

* jects now under way in the Sov-

iet Union, is the nearest thing
I’ve seen to the realization of
the old socialist dream of the
machine doing the work of man.
As Cernavods the banube flows

“almost due north, parallel with

the Black.Sea coast, and only

* after Balataz does it again swing

eastward to enter the sea at
Sulina. :

In this, the final. phase of its
‘long meandering journey through
the heart of Europe, the Danube

‘splits up into a number of shallow

channels and deposits enormous
quantities of silt which necessi-
tates constant dredging.

Incidentally, one af the reasons
advanced by the late Ernest Be-
vin during his stubborn but fruit-
less diplomatic battle for Anglo-
American representation on the
Danube Commission was that the

“backward” Rumanians would
never be able to keep the Sulina .
channel clear of silt. <
6 : -

. It would be difficult, indeed, to
overestimate the immense bene-
fits which the new, people’s Ru-
mania will derive from the canal.
Scheduled for completion in 1955,
it will reduce the sailing distance
between Cernavoda and ‘Constanta
by about six-sevenths; it will
eliminate bottlenecks- on over-
burdened railway lines; the new
port at Midia will have a handling

capacity six, times that of Con-

stanta.
Nor are its benefits restricted

_ got.

site I saw sturdy pe

to transportation. The Rumanian ~

part of the Dabrudja, lying be-
tween the _ northward flowing
Danube and ‘the Black Sea. coast,
it, at present, one of the most
dismal places on’ earth,

Here there are cloudless skies,
merciless sun and hot scorching

.

_ ings, trucks, Jocomotiv'
cavators everywhere

- building » ‘for peace;’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 29, 1951’— Pa

winds in summer, severe 1
and harsh, biting winds i?
waterless. oils-eroded plains: pied
‘arial, marshlands and atv
vegetation.

For over a SN aed
‘Rumanian ruling class toY joy
the idea of revivifying tP? |. it
rudja,. ‘but that was as a ;

years tp

Oeste
In_ 1860, the Danube coms
sion, then dominated by Br te!
and France, summarily } rod)
a plan for buildingva canal: pet
the Rumanian people ane , we
government are doing es of
(ruling class proved inc
doing. ,
In the process of email 2
ture, the canal builders
making themselves.
, At vocational schools 4

and docker’s sons trom
sitting with stubs of Pe
boriously taking notes # ar
for truck drivers, crane
excavator gperators, ean
about ° dynamos and o
achines, |

On_ hostel. ais, cho

site are the slogans:

pouré
building without the oe isi!
£

‘and in spite of the bou