"Anxiety Is Unbecoming"

In Oberhausen, in Germany's Ruhr, a worker hurried toward the gate of a steel mill with a bag of black bread sandwiches under his arm.

"Guten Tag" said a friend, "aren't you striking today?"

"No," replied the worker, "I went out yesterday."

In the Ruhr's third successive week of strikes for more food, there were no banners, no picket lines, no disorders. At Duisburg, Muelheim and Dinslaken, 50,000 workers walked out briefly, then returned quietly and took up their tools again. Such was the troubled surface mood. But beneath the surface in Germany lay a deeper tension. It tightened suddenly last week when the British intercepted and published a detailed plan for churning Western Germany into riot--"Protocol M"--and pinned responsibility on the Belgrade Cominform.

"The Dachshund Howled." "The coming winter," said Protocol M in a message for Red operatives, "will be the decisive period in the history of the German working class. . . . This battle is ... for starting positions for the final struggle. . . ." Then the language became more explicit. Communist cadres would foment hunger demonstrations among factory workers to disrupt production. Transport workers would be prodded to tie up food distribution. The timetable charted general strikes for March, when stocks of fall potatoes would be running out and the Ruhr would be at its hungriest. "The Soviet Union," ran the assurance, "can and will support this battle. . . . The Communist Information Bureau in Belgrade will coordinate. . . ."

Was Protocol M authentic, as the British said it was? German Communists ridiculed the idea. Sneered Soviet-licensed Berlin am Mittag: "Auntie fainted and the dachshund howled with terror as news of the plot came over the radio. . . ." But other Germans asked themselves: Didn't Protocol M check with Moscow's avowed aim to wreck ERP? Wasn't the Ruhr a logical Communist objective? If the protocol was not the gospel from Belgrade, what was the gospel?

Some Ruhr Communists, who were almost ready to believe that a little U.S. aid might do Germany no harm, felt especially troubled.

"We Are Few Here." Still others thought that Protocol M might be anything from a screwball's fraud to a war cry of a group of Communists who were demanding more action by their party. Certainly, there was not much evidence of Communist inspiration in the Ruhr walkouts as yet. But the winter was still young.

In Duesseldorf, German officials from other bizonal states agreed to divert part of their meat and fats to the Ruhr next month. If it worked, Ruhr tension would be eased. But what about the other Western Germans, plenty of whom were having thin scrabbling (see cut)? Was divvying up the rations just another way of divvying discontent? In London, Ernie Bevin sent an urgent personal note to George Marshall warning that German hunger and unrest would likely grow worse. And there were other tensions.

In Berlin, General Lucius D. Clay, U.S. occupation commander, felt obliged to comment on rumors that the Russians would soon push the Western powers out of Berlin. Said he: "The American troops are here to protect Americans and American rights, including the right to be in Berlin. The American troops under my command will use force of arms, if necessary, in carrying out this task. . . . We are few here, but we have behind us the most powerful country in the world and any nervousness or anxiety among Americans here is unbecoming."

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