Calling the Red Bluff

Two months ago East Germany's Communist Volkskammer (Parliament) made a direct appeal to West Germany's Bundestag for talks on German unity. The proposal registered success with wavering Germans afraid of war.

Two weeks ago the Bundestag tardily countered with its own unity program:

1) a four-power conference to create conditions for free, equal and secret elections;

2) international security measures before, during and after elections, to guard the freedom of voters. Said West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer: "The federal government reaffirms its demand for the holding of free . . . elections. It demands that the Soviet-zone government answer this proposal with a clear yes or no."

Last week Adenauer had his answer: no elections. At a special session of the Volkshammer attended by representatives of the Soviet Control Commission, Premier Otto Grotewohl said: "... Conditions fixed by Adenauer and Schumacher mean colonial elections. How can one speak of free, all-German elections if the presupposition is international security measures, which means invasion of American armies into territories of the German Democratic Republic?"

The rest of Grotewohl's speech abandoned the recent German Communist line of wooing the West, went back to undisguised hatred. Adenauer had called the Red bluff.

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