THE RUHR STATUTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26996, 3 February 1949, Page 5

THE RUHR STATUTE

Communists Call for Protest MANIFESTO IN GERMANY New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11.50 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 2. The Communist-controlled “ People’s Council ” last night Issued a manifesto calling on Germans everywhere to protest against the Ruhr Statute and the separation of Western Germany, says the Berlin correspondent of The Times. “ The German people,”.the manifesto declared, “can never recoghise the Ruhr Statute as legal.” The timing of the manifesto, which comes immediately after Mr Stalin’s so-called “ peace ” bid, is significant, says the correspondent. The Communist press has been emphasising the reasonableness of Mr Stalin’s offer and clearly the task of the “ People’s Council ” is to try to influence German opinion with a view to slowing down the formation of the Western German State and bringing pressure to bear on the Western Powers to accept negotiations. This is borne out by the body of the manifesto which alleges that even after the conclusion of the peace treaty, the Ruhr Statute will keep Western Germany in economic and political subservience and that the Security Board set up by the Western Powers will put German industry at the mercy Df foreign competitors.

• It is doubtful whether this manifesto frill have much success. The “People’s Council,” discredited from the first because of its Communist origins, has sever been able to exercise any real Influence on Western German opinion »nd since the failure of its plebiscite for a “just peace” last autumn, it kas kept very much in the background. Its intervention now tends to deepen the scepticism towards Mr Stalin’s affer that already prevails among nonCommunists in Germany, many of tvhom believe that the Russian offer was a “tactical and propagandist” manoeuvre dictated by the success of the Western diplomatic and political sounter-offensive, the fruits of which ire to be seen in the Berlin air lift. The Council of Europe, and the Atlantic pact. As one pro-Western Berlin newspaper says: “The Soviet peace Dffensive must be viewed as an effort*to rectify the balance of power and has nothing to do with a change in Kremlin ideas.”