Warning for Whitsuntide

"German boys and girls, the capital of Germany awaits you," read a huge banner at the Brandenburg Gate, on the border between the city's Eastern and Western sectors. From all over Germany's Russian zone, youngsters this week set out by train, bus and on foot for the long-heralded Whitsuntide demonstration in Berlin. Squads of Communist youths sneaked into West Berlin to paste up Red propaganda posters (see cut). The latest pronouncement from Red Germany's Propaganda Chief Gerhart Eisler was that the demonstration would be a strictly peaceful affair. But U.S. officials were not willing to take Eisler's word for it. The U.S. had announced that it would use force, if necessary, to hold the West's position in Berlin.

Possibly the Reds had actually been intimidated by this U.S. warning. Many parents in the Eastern zone, afraid that their children might come to harm in Berlin, were trying to keep them from taking part in the demonstration. There was no doubt that the Reds could provoke trouble in Berlin if they wanted to--and put the Western Allies in the embarrassing position of having to use force on German civilians, most of them mere kids (see below). Whatever the Russians' intention, on Armed Forces Day last week the U.S. showed that it was ready for trouble.

On Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, which has become something of a shrine for Berliners since the airlift, the U.S. staged a large, lively show including a parade of 1,000 crack troops (led by the 298th Army band and the 7868th fife & drum unit), massed Army, Navy and Air Force colors, helicopters which performed special feats of daring, an exhibition of jets and other U.S. aircraft, and (in the afternoon) a baseball game. Tempelhof field was jammed by 100,000 Berliners who had turned out with baby carriages, folding chairs and lunch boxes to see the show. Star attraction proved to be the famed seven-minute silent drill of the 558th Infantry Rifle Platoon, a crack Negro outfit which used to be General Lucius Clay's honor guard; the soldiers went without music or orders through intricate, breathtakingly precise evolutions that would have overwhelmed the British Grenadiers--or the Rockettes. Exclaimed one former Wehrmacht noncom: "Why, they're practically better than the Prussians!"

On the reviewing stand with U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy were General Thomas T. Handy, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, and other high officials, who had pointedly come to stay in Berlin through Whitsuntide. The Germans appreciated the point, were tremendously cheered by the display. U.S. strength might or might not give pause to the Reds next Sunday; whatever happened, they could not say that they had not been warned of America's determination to stand its ground in Berlin.

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