Wehner Curious, isn't it. Scarcely have we got the grimy old cloth cap off this party's head and wrenched the oily spanner out of its hands than the big chief's got us all into white tie and tails, drinking champagne out of actresses' slippers. No wonder they all love him. All the champagne-growers, at any rate. All the firms that rent out evening dress.

Schmidt (with Wilke and Guillaume) Berliners! Not one of them who knows the value of money! We give them three billion marks a year to keep the city going, so they chuck it around as if it came out of the taps. And now of course Willy's letting them take over the whole government. It's like some kind of infestation!

Wilke Even got them in here. Union business, Herr Guillaume?

Guillaume Party business.

Wilke Oh, yes, you've been promoted.

Schmidt Not that Willy's even a real Berliner. He was born in LÜbeck! So of course he has to be more Berlinish than all the rest of them.

Ehmke (with Brandt and Guillaume) The problem with Uncle is very simple. He doesn't like you and you don't like him. The problem with Helmut is more complex. He loves you - and you don't love him back. He's like a sixth-former with a crush on the teacher. So he has to keep proving to her how much cleverer than her he is.

Wehner (with Schmidt and Guillaume) Horst Ehmke closeted away with Number One again.

Schmidt He's rapidly becoming Willy's Lord High Chamberlain. We're all going to end up taking our orders from him.

Wehner He's certainly stepped in your light.

Ehmke (with Brandt and Guillaume) Willy, what you need to do with both of them is to make them feel secure and appreciated. And the way to do that, Willy, if I may put it plainly, is to give them both the most colossal boot up the backside.

Guillaume - And then underneath it all, gnawing away like rats at the foundations of the whole enterprise - the new left.

Genscher (with Brandt, Ehmke,, Nollau and Guillaume) This is our Achilles heel. People look at the government and what do they see? A lot of long-haired radicals from the universities. People didn't like them when they were rampaging round the streets in '68, and they don't like them now.

Guillaume — Genscher. Minister of the Interior. He's the one who's got to control the demonstrations.

Genscher Every time people turn on the television - yet more violence by the left. They've held up a bank. They've murdered a judge.

Ehmke That's Baader-Meinhof! The Red Army Fraction! Nothing to do with our lot! Our lot wouldn't put their thumb on a bedbug!

Genscher The left's the left. As far as most people are concerned.

Brandt It was the young radicals who put us in office.

Ehmke We shove the old left off the raft before it finally sinks under their weight, and as soon as the new left see it's afloat they all scramble aboard and sink it again.