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The Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) wrote
that the Moscow Conference will certainly
not result in shaping the German peace
treaty, but emphasized its importance for
Europe:
"Moscow is confronted with the task of
achieving a constructive agreement among
the Eastern and Western powers. A failure
of this attempt might result ultimately in a
separation of Germany into a Western and an
Eastern half. The gravity of such a disaster
is unimaginable. But the fate of Germany
- and Europe - demands a decision. It will
no longer be satisfied with interim solu-
tions . .
The Fuldaer Volkszeitung debunked ru-
mors and secret German hopes such as "The
Americans are going to take Silesia and
Pomerania away from the Russians (who do
not have it at all) .  . We may be able to
draw profit from the incomprehensible pre-
dilection of the Ivans for a German Saar
District . . . and the Czechoslovaks are soon
going to realize that they can't get along
without the Sudeten Germans, so we'll soon
be rid of the whole onerous brood of expel-
lees."
The Stuttgarter Nachrichten believed that
the Deputy Military Governor's words about
the "Soviet Stock Company" being "the only
foreign monopoly in Germany" must remain
incomprehensible to many Germans. So the
paper undertook to explain:
"The Soviet Union started to transfer Ger-
man works on German soil into Russian
State property. The gigantic industrial trust
so created comprises today at least 200 en-
terprises . . . all iron works, all railroad and
automobile factories, 80 per cent of metal
works, 70 per cent of optical and fine me-
chanic works, 5Q per cent of locomotive and
engine fabrication. The Soviet AG has ab-
goes to the Soviet Union."
The Fraenkische Nachrichten (Tauber-
bischofsheim), commented on Marshal Soko-
lovsky's remark on US loans to Germany. He
called them "slavery credits," the paper said,
adding:
"Every German who kept a clear head
must regard this expression as completely
misplaced.  We are hungry, but without
American assistance we would have starved.
We suffer under severe economic distress,
but if the US, instead of lending help, had
done in the war-ravaged West that which
was done in the East we could all have laid
down and died."
The Main Post (Wuerzburg) commented
on a causal connection between the lack of
books in Germany and budding underground
activity:
"It would be unjust to regard the incor-
rigibility of the Germans as definite as long
as no systematic attempt has been made to
correct their thinking.  It is almost in-
credible how MG and the Land governments
have shunned an elementary part of reedu-
cation: (They have failed) to give to a people
that is hungry for books and ready to read
and therefore malleable in its thinking those
books from which it could have learned polit-
ically
"We have a plethora of periodicals . . .
but what we do not have (though it may
sometimes seem just as essential as imported
grain) are mass editions of books that every
German ought to have read in order to see
himself and his time more clearly than
was heretofore the habit . . . Why does one
not publish, for instance, Heiden's Hitler
biography in millions of copies and dis-
tribute it for a small price to the German
public?
"If anywhere money should play no role
it would be here . .
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