John Scott is trying to re-open our Berlin office among the ruins, and here are a jew paragraphs from his report on some of the things he is running up against:

"When Knauth and Wertenbaker left after the Potsdam conference I was sleeping on a cot in the hall, had the use of a desk, and that's about all.

"Now I have a two-room flat at Limastrasse 12. It's nicely furnished for Berlin--there's a bed (but no sheets for six weeks), a couple of desks, chairs, and even a piano. Somehow the Russians overlooked most of the household equipment--plates, cups, and some table linen which we could use on occasion. I have 'organized' a radio and borrowed an office typewriter. There was no telephone service until this week in this part of Berlin. I've also managed to get a car. (It's a lemon.) I still have to try to get the windows of the house fixed and also have the roof repaired.

"Back of my two rooms is a larger room which used to be a dining room.

At present it's unoccupied because a Katusha shell went through the wall and the floor, but it could be fixed up.

"The bathroom is in bad shape, too -- the window's blown out and most of the tiles are broken, but it's usable. If we get gas, which we hope to get sometime this winter, there will be hot water.

"(Just as I was dictating this the ordnance people blew up some German mines somewhere very close. It looks as if we're going to have to fix some more windows.)

"Another big problem is food. We are fed in the mess hall, not well but adequately. We cannot take food out of the mess, nor at present can we get K-rations if we miss a meal. So if I go to the theater or a concert, I have to miss dinner. This is probably good for me, but eventually some arrangement will have to be made to stock food here in the office. Please could Jack Manthorp or some other enterprising individual in the New York office examine the possibilities of sending in a major shipment of food by freight?

"The black market here is impossibly expensive--butter is hard to find at $100 a pound, a loaf of bread costs from $5 to $12. Black market meals in restaurants are of very poor quality and also extremely expensive.

"I have met a dozen or so German artists, writers, engineers--people well worth knowing. They occasionally invite me to dinner, sometimes fairly good meals, which they manage through relatives in the country or God knows how. The only way I can reciprocate is by giving them cigarets when I have any or by taking them out to dinner in one of the local night clubs, which are crowded, dysentery-ridden institutions at best and where $100 is not at all expensive for a meal for two or three people.

"There are about 25 American correspondents left here. Since I speak Russian almost as well as I speak English, I have been meeting quite a few Red Army officers, and within a couple of weeks I hope to be sending some cables on the Russian viewpoint. And during the next three months I want to take several trips out of Berlin, including one to Poland. . . ."

Scott is used to rugged going. (Perhaps you remember that he spent five years working in the Russian steel mills at Magnitogorsk.) And the food is on its way.

Cordially,

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