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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 17, 1984
PAGE 11
What is the real significance of all these signs of new indepen
dence in the Eastern Bloc?••• George Orwell has warned us in his
book 1984 about the dangers of a controlled media producing a
race without any independent thought. But that doesn't seem to
be happening, and instead of Marxist robots the people of Eastern
Europe after 40 years of suppression are still as fiercely
independent as ever •...
It may be that the Russians have bitten off more than they can
chew--particularly in Afghanistan where, despite the use of mas
sive weaponry and means of destruction the battle with the
Mujahideen is still going on•...
Whatever the cause, something very fundamental and important is
going on. That something could well prove to be a threat to peace
if the Russians, desperate to preserve their empire, decide to
lash out in the same way as they did in Hungary and Czechoslova
kia years ago.
But the� "something," if sensitively used and developed�
the West, could equally lead to the restoration of freedom 1n
half of the Continent of Europe.
In the August 6 FINANCIAL TIMES of Britain, journalists Rupert Cornwell in
Bonn and Leslie Colitt in West Berlin analyzed the inter-German thaw in an
article entitled "The Flirtation Worries Moscow." They point out that the
Soviets themselves are largely responsible for supplying the East/West Ger
man momentum they now deplore.
A ghost has slipped forth from a long locked diplomatic cellar.
Flitting on the edge of the European stage once more
is
the Ger
� Question, the quandary of the identity and boundaries of the
German nation, after the miseries it has caused this century.
For confirmation, one need look no further than the reverbera
tions set loose by the present warming of relations between Bonn
and East Berlin.
Their new agreement, a
DM
950m bank credit
guaranteed by the West German Government, against some distinctly
modest humanitarian concessions from its eastern neighbour, seems
hardly the stuff to change history.
Yet the reactions it has already drawn--above all from the fast
nesses of Russia--have been reminder enough of an obvious but
awkward truth; that the post-war order of Europe and the balance
there between East and West, are crystallised around the unna-
tural division of the Geriii'a'n people....
�-
The true target [of PRAVDA's attacks], of course, has not been so
much the capitalists in Bonn, but the hitherto client Communist
leadership in East Berlin.
And the warning to Herr Erich
Honecker, the East German leader, about threats to "undermine the
Socialist order in the German Democratic Republic" is one of the
most serious in the Soviet arsenal••••
And it should not be forgotten that the West too has� quietly
satisfied at the post-war answer to the German Question. It was