Anne O'Hare McCormick

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations and the effect of decisiveness itself "makes things go" and creates confidence.

But the cruel quirk in the situation is that conditions on the other side of the line are so hopeless that 500 are now returning out of the 1000 who escaped daily. There is no place for them in Germany.....Nothing reveals the present state of affairs more clearly than the fact that people who risk their lives to get out of Soviet territory take the greater risk of going back when they see what awaits them outside.