Alcalá 1990

International

The End Of The War To End Wars

of it all. If the horrifying cycle that..began .iJl.1914 is at last completed, what new wheels have begun to turn? Instability in Eastern Europe has seldom brought good news. But this dissolution may lead to settlement, even if the settlement's shape re– mains unclear. Armistice is only laying down of arms, not peace. And for as long as it has stood, the Berlin wall has symbolized a Europe not at peace, and a world polarized by Soviet-American rivalry. Mikhail Gorbachev has spoken of a European house. No one, not even he, can yet be sure how the rooms might fit together. Still, no house has a wall through its middle, and for the first time in a generation, neither does Europe.

rowds of younger Germans danced on top of the hated Berlin wall Thursday night. They danced for joy, they danced for history. They danced be– cause the tragic cycle of catastrophes

many's delegates surrendered in 1918, and Eur– ope was again plunged into strife. Some 20 million people died in World War I, perhaps 60 million in World War II, but even these two appalling acts of miscalculation and bloodletting did not bring Europe's torments to an end. The tragedy had a third act: the cold war divided a Europe freed from Hitler's tyranny from a Europe bowed under Stalin's. The Berlin wall, erected by Erich Honecker in 1961, stood as the foremost symbol of that division and the Continent's continuing stasis. The reveling crowds of Berliners mingling from East and West could scarcely believe that the hated wall had at last been breached. Those watching them around the world could only share their delight - and their wonder at the meaning

that first convulsed Europe 76 years ago, embrac– ing two world wars, a Holocaust and a cold war, seems at long last to be nearing an end. Nov. 11, now named Veterans Day, is the day of the armistice that ended World War I. But that war to end wars was lost when the victors bun– gled the peace. They exacted heavy reparations from Germany, paving the way to chaos and the rise of National Socialism. The years between the two wars turned out to be merely a truce. Hitler in 1940 received the surrender of the French forces in the same railroad car in which Ger-

End Power Monopoly. Gorbachev Asks Party

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By MICHAEL PARKS TIMES STAFF WRITER

deepening crisis. Gorbachev, in a historic speech to the party's policy-making Central Committee, also urged Communists to cast off "decades of ideological dogmas" that they still hold about socialism and to rethink their basic policies on everything from economic development to class struggle.

OSCOW - President Mikhail S. Gor– bachev on Monday called upon the communist Party to yield its long monopoly on power and allow the de–

velopment of a truly pluralist political system, including rival parties, to give the Soviet Union the dynamic leadership it needs to emerge from a

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