The Tramp of Migrants

When East Germany was split off from the West in the aftermath of World War II, it had 18 million people. In the 15 years since then, 3,400,000 East Germans have fled to the West, leaving behind them an acute labor shortage.

The mass exodus not only continues but is currently on the increase: over the Easter weekend, 5,200 refugees checked in at reception centers in West Germany and West Berlin. A total of 46,367 East Germans sought asylum in the West during the first three months of 1961--a 40% rise over the comparable period last year. Nowadays, most of the refugees remain in camps for only a few days of routine processing, then are sluiced on to jobs in booming, labor-short West German indus try. Although East German leaders have long expressed alarm at the continuing outflow of citizens, and particularly at the flight of the young and the skilled, they have cast about in vain for means of stopping it.

Last month Strongman Walter Ulbricht himself took a hand in the matter and ordered party followers to "determine what are the reasons behind the migration . . . and take steps to correct them." Trouble is that Communism's proven means of sealing borders--land-mined strips, barbed-wire barriers and machine-gun-equipped watchtowers--cannot be used in Berlin, where most of the defections take place, because four-power regulations governing the city require sectoral borders to remain open, and the elevated and subway trains link Eastern and Western parts of the city.

If a new Berlin crisis comes, in the view of such West Berliners as Mayor Willy Brandt, it will not be because of any whim or brinksmanship of Nikita Khrushchev's but because East Germany's satellite leaders have pushed Moscow into trying to rid them of a vexing, chronic embarrassment.

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