Communist prestige was at low ebb in Western Germany. Yet in Düsseldorf last week a grinning, pinch-faced Stalinist with silver-grey hair was carried like a hero on the shoulders of a cheering, surging mob. He was Max Reimann, Communist boss of Western Germany.
The new statute for an International Ruhr Authority (TIME, Jan. 10), although it allayed French fears, had not brought peace to the humming Ruhr. Britain, France and the U.S. were still bickering over how many plants should be dismantled; plans for a three-zone merger (that is, for a merger of the French zone with Anglo-U.S. Bizonia) were...