Tale of Two Cities

A rumor spread that the Russians had ordered railway employees to stand by for reopening of the line from Helmstedt to Berlin. The German supervisor of the line denied it. Another rumor had it that the Russians were beefing up their defenses in front of Germany's western zones. All semblance of four-power control of Berlin had ended on July i; the Russians finished the obsequies last week by hauling down their flag from the Kommandatura building, removing Uncle Joe Stalin's picture and withdrawing their sentry.

TIME'S Berlin Bureau Chief Emmet Hughes cabled: "The notable mark of Russian conduct here is that in no respect has it been tempered by the talks in Moscow. While Western officials feel bound these days to move warily on such issues as the currency crisis, lest the Moscow talks be prejudiced in the slightest way, the Russians plainly feel no such restraint.

"Without respite, the Soviet offensive has been carried on. Berlin has two currencies, two food administrations, two trade unions, in effect two city treasuries. In the handling of anything from tax revenues to arrested criminals, Berlin is now two cities."

Time for a Protest. For a fortnight the city's two police forces had been seizing vehicles from each other. Last week the Communist police chief sued to recover an automobile which, he said, the West Berlin police chief had wrongfully impounded. Germans noted the disappearance of several men who worked on the West Berlin force but lived in the Soviet sector. The Red cops raided black marketeers near the sector line, and when some of the fleeing Germans scrambled across it, the police followed. West Berlin police and Allied MPs appeared and ordered the invaders back; they complied, but the Red press screamed that the Western powers were "harboring" criminal fugitives.

Two squadrons of Yak fighters droned over the city in formation, scaring Berliners. The four powers had agreed that there would be no formation flying over Berlin or over the Western air corridors. At the four-power Air Safety Center, the lone Russian official, who was poring over a magazine, looked at his watch, silently handed a paper to a U.S. captain sitting nearby, and resumed his reading. The paper was another protest against alleged U.S. flight violations.

Fifty Days. On Friday the 13th, Berlin had weathered 50 days of siege. The stormiest wind and rain of the year whipped through the ruined city. Nevertheless, on that day the West's cargo planes flew in more than 2,000 tons.* At Tempelhof, a C-54 winged in & out of the overcast with a load of coal, overshot the field, crashed a fence, burst into flame. The two U.S. flyers got out safely through an emergency hatch--leaving the airlift's death toll still at five.

Throngs of women and children brought gifts--carved jade, Meissen chinaware, jeweled watches--to their heroes, the Anglo-U.S. airmen. Some 1,300 German laborers, of whom 75% were women, started work on a new airport in the city's French sector (see cut). Said Christian Democrat Leader Jakob Kaiser: "Fifty days of blockade have proved that what was supposed to force Berlin to surrender to a foreign will has been transformed into democracy's greatest victory in Germany since the war."

* The previous day a record 4,700 tons was brought in.

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