Everlasting Friends?

Red Poland's President Boleslaw Bierut paid a visit of state this week to Red East Germany. Object of his call: to exchange with the leaders of Soviet Germany a pledge of "everlasting peace and friendship, perhaps also to negotiate new economic and political pacts."

As Bierut detrained in East Berlin, Soviet German Premier Otto Grotewohl gave assurances: "Our worthy guest can be convinced that millions of men stand un-shakeably behind the policy of friendship ... support without reservations the peace border on the Oder-Neisse line." Bierut replied: "Our people have shaken hands over . . . the Oder-Neisse line." Red delegations chorused: "The Oder-Neisse line is the border of peace."

Why all the emphasis on the frontier between two Red satellites? Western authorities believe that East Germans were pressing for a return from Poland of former German territory beyond the Oder and Neisse Rivers; this sentiment smoldered underground, undermined Red rule, disturbed the Communist regimes in neighboring Poland and Czechoslovakia. Bierut's visit to Berlin was apparently designed to dispel the reports of ugly ill feeling between the satellites. But to Westerners it looked as though the comrades did protest too much.

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