COMMUNIST YOUTH RALLY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26492, 6 August 1951, Page 7

COMMUNIST YOUTH RALLY

Western Precautions In Berlin

(Rec. 8 p.m.) BERLIN, August 4. British, French and American troops will be held at the alert throughout the Communist world youth festival which opens in the eastern sector of Berlin to-morrow. The festival will last for a fortnight. Allied occupation officials said they did not fear an invasion of West Berlin by Communist youth delegates, but troops would be kept ready to support special anti-riot squads. Thousands of flags, coloured posters and murals painted on tall wooden pillars to-day turned East Berlin into a vast Communist playground. Blueshirted German Communist youths filed past Germany's only statue of Mr Stalin, erected hastily yesterday near Marx-Engels square, the Communist parade ground in the eastern sector.

Two million Germans and 30.000 visitors from 90 countries will attend the festival. A programme of sporting and cultural competitions in five vast stadiums has been arranged. Major-General Geoffrey K. Bourne, the British commandant in West Berlin, said: “The Communist inoculation of youth by high-charged emotion instead of fact is bound to have a terrible influence, especially on West German youth.” Allied observers expect the highlight of the festival to be a parade of American prisoners of war from Korea, who became “peace fighters” in captivity. The North Korean delegation is reported to include an 18-year-old antiaircraft gunner who shot down 11 American planes, and a nurse who saved 85 Korean lives. The American authorities in Austria last night turned back more than 1000 British and French nationals who were going to the Berlin rally.

American officials and troops ordered them off Vienna-bound trains at the demarcation line between the American and French zones of Austria.

The delegates, who had previously been refused permission to travel directly through West Germany to East Berlin, had hoped to reach the rally by way of Vienna and Iron Curtain countries.

The Americans said that the delegates did not have the necessary papers to enable them to enter the Soviet zone of Austria without risking arrest.

In London an official of the British Youth Festival Committee said that the West German Government had refused permission for British aeroplanes carrying British delegates to fly over its territory. At Dieppe, the French authorities turned back 12 Britons on their way to the rally.