Forum Discusses German Recovery

Walter Hollerer, professor and literary magazine editor from Germany, told an International Seminar Forum audience last night that "East Berlin students regard the United States as a symbol of free life."

Germany's present intellectual climate is compounded of three elements, Hollerer continued? "an optimistic realism" which seeks the rapid achievement of practical goals, 'the old German humanism" founded on classical traditions, and a "scepticism of doctrine and dogma" created by recent events of German history.

Emil Kroher of the Federal Republic's Agency for Democratic Education said that whoever wins in the German elections this September, "Germany will belong to the free world." Kroher outlined three goals to insure Germany's future adherence to democratic ideals. He called for "a confrontation with the past," education in democracy, and "information about the Bolshevik reality."

Gerhard Weck, lawyer and newspaper correspondent, pointed with pride to Germany's rapid economic recovery which he attributed not to miracles but "a series of fortuitous events" including the Marshall Plan and the currency reform instituted by the Allied occupation. He praised policies of the German government which encouraged private investment and a free competetive market system by wise tax laws and an anti-cartel policy.

Ho Chen-Yah, Hong Kong publisher, speaking on the attitudes of overseas Chinese, forsaw a decline in communist sentiments and "an eventual defeat of communism in China and South-East Asia as a whole." At present however, he admitted there is "a limit to what the overseas Chinese can do "to bring this about.