GERMANY: Communist Enterprise

One day last week the U.S. took the sternest measures yet against the German “cigaret economy.” Washington banned private shipments of American cigarets, indicated that U.S. personnel in Germany would get only enough for themselves. Black marketeers moaned. Said one, hopefully: “Clever American people will find a way to beat the law.” But by week’s end it was the clever Russians who were showing most of the enterprise. Four days after Washington’s dictum, millions of American-looking Russian cigarets were flooding Berlin at 2½ marks apiece—half the price of U.S. cigarets.