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"The best news from Western Germany came from the Ruhr, where coal production soared to a postwar peak of 308,864 tons in one day. Unfortunately, this result was achieved only through various forms of bribery—cigarettes, fats, canned meats for the miners. At the same time, synchronized with the drive on Berlin, the well-organized Ruhr Communists started a push to disrupt Western Germany's uncertain economy. Red agitators made dire predictions of heavy unemployment in the fall which, U.S. experts concede, may come true. One of the more brilliant young Communists is Willi Agatz, vice president of the 460,000 organized Ruhr miners. Cried he last week: 'Do you want the British and French capitalists to grow rich and fat on the production made possible by the coal you sweat to shovel? . . . These mines are part of Germany. Are we going to stand for these foreigners taking whatever they want? . . .'
"In the face of that line, it would be hard to explain to Germans about the Marshall Plan and European cooperation. Before 1948 is over, the West may have as much trouble in the Ruhr as it is having in Berlin today."
"For the Last Time." Meanwhile the battle of Berlin continued in customary fashion. Sometimes, when the Russians carried on their ursine comedy of manners, it was hard to believe in the battle's reality—as when the Soviet representative last week formally announced his country's withdrawal from the four-power Kommandatura, which the Russians had formally declared nonexistent the week before. (Afterwards the Russian invited his colleagues to lunch—"for the last time.")
The West continued to hold its ground in Berlin—and its sky above Berlin. The U.S. Air Force and the R.A.F. announced that they could jointly supply the 2,000 tons a day needed by Berliners in the Western sectors. The U.S. was even experimenting with the dropping of coal (for Berlin's basic utilities) from B-29s. But it was obvious that Operation Vittles could not be carried on at summer rate when winter comes. In the long run, the siege would have to be lifted from the outside. By week's end, it boomed far beyond Berlin's battlements, and even beyond Western Germany's precarious drawbridges, to the buttresses of Washington, London and Paris.
After days of transatlantic buzzing, it was decided that the Western commanders in Berlin should try once more to reach an understanding with Russia's Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky. General Clay, Britain's General Sir Brian Robertson and France's General Pierre Koenig called on Sokolovsky, left after half an hour with nothing apparently accomplished. The Russians said that they could not tell when the "repairs" on the railroads would be finished—which officially left them in the strange position of saying that while the Western powers could supply two million people by air, the Soviet Union was too incompetent to keep a railway open.