BERLIN: The Islanders

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At Berlin's Tempelhof Airport one morning last week 10,000 Germans stood silent vigil under a warm spring sun. At last, to the strains of The Star Spangled Banner and God Save the Queen, relatives of 71 U.S. and British flyers killed in the Berlin airlift moved forward to place wreaths at the foot of a stark, three-pronged monument that reaches toward the sky like a clutching hand. With one eye on Geneva, West Berlin observed the tenth anniversary of the day the Russians lifted the Berlin blockade.

On hand to help Berlin celebrate were some of the great Allied figures of blockade days: Britain's Earl Attlee, former French Premier Robert Schuman, and, most loudly cheered of all, General Lucius D. Clay, who as U.S. Military Governor in Germany initiated the airlift. But for the people of Berlin, the climax of the ceremonies came when a youngish, slightly rumpled man with a football tackle's build rose to thank the guests of honor for their services to his city a decade ago. Said Willy Brandt, 45, Governing Mayor of West Berlin: "We have not forgotten our friends ... If need be, the people of Berlin are ready to brave new hardships and sacrifices."

In Moscow "all this feverish hullabaloo" was called by Tass "a reactionary attempt to exert pressure" on Geneva. And in a way, Tass was partly right. Fact was that aggressive Willy Brandt was hopefully awaiting an invitation to Geneva to help dramatize his city's plight. Meanwhile, Berlin, the beleaguered "island in the Red sea," was reminding the Western powers that, come Stalin, come Khrushchev, the underlying goals of Soviet foreign policy remain the same. It was also reminding them that the heart of the matter at Geneva is whether West Berlin and its 2,228,500 people will remain free.

The Trap Door. Most of the oratory at Geneva last week was ostensibly devoted to complex and interwoven diplomatic issues—disarmament, security pacts, the reunification of East and West Germany. But one word recurred like an insistent refrain—Berlin, Berlin, Berlin. As U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter candidly admitted in his opening speech, the Geneva conference was meeting "not because of any change in the political situation which would appear to make solutions more likely." It was meeting only because Nikita Khrushchev had threatened the peace of the world by proclaiming his intention to evict the Western powers from Berlin.

Whatever he hoped to gain from it, Khrushchev could hardly have found a more effective lever than his threat against Berlin. Militarily, Berlin is a net liability to the Western powers—an indefensible position tying down 11,000 crack troops who would probably be expendable if war broke. Economically, Berlin is an apparently bottomless pit into which the U.S. and West German governments have poured almost $4 billion in direct aid since 1950—the equivalent of about $1,800 apiece for every West Berliner. But as a kind of trap door, opening up 110 miles inside the Communist empire, Berlin has incalculable political value to the West.