President Kennedy╒s visit to West Berlin today brought into the streets and squares and on to balconies and roofs crowds estimated at one and a half million, or some two-thirds of the entire population.
With the Lord Mayor, Herr Brandt, and the West German Chancellor, Dr Adenauer, Mr Kennedy made a 30-mile tour of the city and received the kind of reception that the British reserve for coronations only.
He arrived at Tegel airport this morning to a salute of guns and a band playing ╥Hail to the Chief,╙ and, after seven hours, flew on to Ireland this evening, leaving behind streets littered with tattered paper flags, burst balloons, and confetti.
Schools were closed for the day, and most shops, offices, and factories gave their employees half a day off. Many onlookers were crying as the President╒s column passed by, flanked by 50 police motor-cyclists and stretching for a quarter of a mile. One man sat up in a bed which had been brought into the street. Outside the zoo, keepers held up chimpanzees to see the President. Everywhere there were banners and posters of welcome, and two or three others which asked ╥Why hard in Cuba and so soft in Berlin?╙
About two hundred thousand people crowded into the Rudolf Wilde Platz for Mr Kennedy╒s speech before his reception at the town hall. People fainted by the dozen in the heat, though there were enough hearty ones left to cheer his every statement with such force that families and friends beyond the wall probably heard without the aid of radio and television, which the Communists were doing their best to jam.
The President said that real, lasting peace in Europe could never be assured as long as one German out of four was denied the elementary right of making a free choice. All free men he said, were citizens of Berlin wherever they might live. He took pride in saying, ╥I am a Berliner.╙
