Kretschmann Here's how we can help him. And of course what we want to know about most of all is . . .

Guillaume The Eastern Policy.

Kretschmann The Eastern Policy. Any scrap of information that helps us judge his intentions towards the socialist block. Reconciliation, he says. Peace. But can we trust him? Is he really going to risk everything on such a gamble? 'Small steps', he says. How small? As small as the space he gives it in his speeches, slipped in below security and a lot of pious platitudes about 'daring more democracy'?

Brandt — It was the historical achievement of my predecessors in this office to establish an understanding between Germany and its former enemies in the West. This understanding remains the basis of our political life and the guarantee of our security. But the division of the world into two great power blocs has torn Europe apart. It has split our country and our capital, and undermined our relationship with the peoples to the East of us. Our reconciliation with them is, as we all know, especially difficult. And yet it is as essential for peace as our reconciliation with the West.

Kretschmann But will he really pay the price, when he comes right down to it? Is he really going to persuade people here to take their head out of the sand at last and recognise that we exist? You and me? The other Germany? Will he pay the final bill for the war: a quarter of Germany's lands lost to Poland and Russia - another quarter, us seceded and free. Half the nation, gone for ever!

Brandt - Those who have been separated from their families, those whose homeland has been taken, will never forget what they have lost, and we can only try to understand and respect their grief.

Kretschmann Twelve million people who have taken refuge here will never forgive him. Can any democratic politician simply write off a fifth of the population? He chooses his words so carefully. What do they mean?

Brandt - Even if it is true that two separate states exist in Germany they can never be foreign to each other. We are bound by our language and our history, by our glory and our woe. We have even now common tasks and common responsibilities: for the peace between ourselves and for peace in Europe. Our unity is gone, and there is no way back. Step by step we must seek to ease the pain of separation. We must draw a line under the evils of the past. This government, then, will venture to open direct negotiations with Moscow, with Warsaw, and with East Berlin . . .

Kretschmann But can we really trust him?

Guillaume You can't help trusting him. When you're there in the audience. You look up at him - and there he is looking straight back at you. You personally. Talking to you alone. One human being to another.