DELIVERY OF MAILS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 51, 9 December 1948, Page 5

DELIVERY OF MAILS

Russian Order in Berlin FIRST OF NEW MEASURES (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright.) LONDON, Dec. S. “The Western Berlin postal authorities have announced that the Russians have refused to permit any further exchange of mails between the western and eastern sectors,” says the Berlin correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.” “The Russian move is regarded as the first of a series of measures to tighten the ring round Western Berlin, and is described in Western circles as ‘the first official Russian reaction to the overwhelming anticommunist vote at Sunday’s elections.’ ” The Berlin correspondent of “The Times” says it is understood that the result of the elections has rudely surprised the Russians and their allies of the Socialist Unity Party, particularly the evidence they provide that many Communists transferred their votes to the Social Democratic Party. . “What form the Russian reaction win eventually take is not certain, he added, “but last night there were indications that irritating restrictions will be increasingly applied. “For example; Germans living either in the eastern sector or in the Russian zone will no longer be able to write freely to relatives and friends in western Berlin unless letters are collected personally at specified points. “Few western Berliners have shown themselves disposed to take out new identity cards, which the Russians have ordered, entitling them to go into the eastern sector. This means in effect that they will not be able to pick up their- letters.” Moscow Comments The Moscow radio, in a broadcast in English, said yesterday that the municipal elections had been carefully rehearsed and played according to the script of the Western occupation authorities. . ' ~ The commentator said that, these were police elections, with a large force of western sector police and troops mustered against peaceful Ger man civilians, who did not want to have a hand in splitting Berlin. Arrangements for the votes to be counted in special premises, and not in the polling stations, had precluded all possibility of control by representatives of the democratic public, and offered plentiful opportunities for all kinds of trickery. The Berlin correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” says that the population of Western Berlin welcomed' the results of the elections “with the pride and relief of a student who has passed a difficult examination with distinction.” There was no doubt, lie said, that in addition to the vote in the western sector©, the population of Eastern Berlin would also have voted overwhelmingly against the Russians and their supporters had they been given the oportunity to do so. The voting figures showed that the Socialist Unity Party lost roughly 50 per cent, of its support, or about the same proportion as the Communist losses in local elections in Western Germany last month. The correspondent adds that Pro fessov Reuter heads the Russian list

of “warm'ongers.”