The Chancellor's Visit

West Berliners lined the curbs last week and shouted "Hoch" at a long-absent face. After three years as West Germany's Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer was finally visiting his country's most exposed outpost, and it was high time. His absence had become a notable political fact, exploited by the Reds. For West Berlin does not even have the right to be represented in West Germany's Bundestag, and sends only observers. Metropolitan Berliners sneer at Adenauer's capital of Bonn, which they call Bundesdorj (capital village) and believe that comfortably safe Bonn has forgotten endangered Berlin.

Adenauer's trip went far to make up for the neglect. Speaking to 4,000 workers amidst a jungle of insulators, transformers and generators in the huge yard of the Siemens electric plant in the British sector, he extended not high compliments but a specific promise "to make living tolerable for you, to give you confidence that . . . your economic situation will be such that you can survive this time of trial."

Adenauer's program: 1) a special department to channel government purchasing to Berlin, 2) special lower taxes for Berlin manufacturers, 3) 20 million marks for unemployment relief, some 35 million more in housing credits.

Said the mollified Berlin Kurier: "The situation remains serious, but it will be easier to bear now." As Adenauer waved farewell from the steps of the Rathaus after seven hours in Berlin, voices shouted: "Come back some time."

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