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What leisure time he had left over from this schedule, the mayor spent at home, with his wife Hanna, and their son Edzard, 22. (He has two other children by a previous marriage—son Harry, now a British subject, who is studying at Manchester University, and daughter Hella, who is ill and lives in Western Germany.) His leisure wants were simple: cigars to smoke and a library to browse in. "All we own," Frau Reuter said, "is a sofa, some armchairs and a few rugs. Everything else is rented. My husband is really only interested in his books, but they are all special ones. I don't think you will find a novel in the house. You will find all the Greek philosophers and just about everything of Goethe's."
Toward the Initiative. Ernst Reuter was not a man to concern himself unduly or exclusively with what the Communists might be brewing for his city and the rest of the Western camp. He preferred to think about a course of action for the free nations. Last week, in an interview with TIME'S Berlin Bureau Chief Enno Hobbing, Reuter, in simple and eloquent language, summed up a program for Germans —and for all free men. Said he:
"I hope my own people understand that they have only one choice and one chance to make a sensible life for themselves. The Germans know they lost the war and they want to do something decent. It should be the job of political leadership to rouse those good instincts, to give the people a real purpose.
"Before that can be done, American divisions must come over here to strengthen the Western German feeling of security. How can you give people a purpose when they know that if the Soviets attack, they'll be on the Rhine in no time? Even if everyone took up a knife or club, there would be no stopping them. The people have to know there is at least a chance.
"Military measures are no final solution to the problem. The people have to know what they are fighting for, what shape their country is intended to take. That can only be done if the Bonn government begins to move to Berlin. Then the whole world would understand that Bonn had taken title to all of Germany, that it spoke and acted with a claim to the Germans in the East. The aim would be to get the Soviets to withdraw, with some face-saving gesture.
"Impossible? The Soviets are much more elastic than other powers; they can go backwards elastically too. After all, they did it during the blockade."
Toward New Horizons. "Whether we actually get another Soviet assault on Berlin depends on how much the West rearms, politically, morally and militarily, and on how much it moves on to Berlin. If it does that, it can demand from the Soviets: 'We want free elections in all Germany. We want free access to Berlin.'
"Therefore, we must quickly get a genuine Western army and a Western general staff. Any idea of a separate German army is obvious nonsense, and we don't have to discuss it. A Western army must be organized in which the Germans can join.