In Oberhausen, in Germany's Ruhr, a worker hurried toward the gate of a steel mill with a bag of black bread sandwiches under his arm.
"Guten Tag" said a friend, "aren't you striking today?"
"No," replied the worker, "I went out yesterday."
In the Ruhr's third successive week of strikes for more food, there were no banners, no picket lines, no disorders. At Duisburg, Mülheim and Dinslaken, 50,000 workers walked out briefly, then returned quietly and took up their tools again. Such was the troubled surface mood. But beneath the surface in Germany lay a deeper tension. It tightened suddenly last week...