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International
The End Of The War To End Wars
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
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-
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
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.
End Power Monopoly. Gorbachev Asks Party
0
By MICHAEL PARKS
TIMES STAFF WRITER
M
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
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.
Alcala
Gazette