Beyond the Horizon

One of the biggest and most probable international moves in the future is the actual alliance of the U.S., Great Britain and perhaps Russia, not just to win the war, but to rule the peace. With the future of Russia still a great unknown, for months practical men in England and the U.S.* have been working hard on the first leg of the probable triple alliance.

The beginning (the Lend-Lease Act) and the hoped-for end (a just peace everywhere) are easy to see. The path between lies across a morass. But last week such progress had been made that the State Department allowed word to leak out that both Governments would be ready within 60 days to publish a "Declaration of Intentions."

The Declaration set up a way to begin to answer vast economic questions: Who will pay what to whom at World War II's end? What about Britain's enormous and ever increasing Lend-Lease obligations?

The State Department, according to the usual "informed sources," has asked the British to cooperate in a post-war plan removing restrictions on the flow of international trade. This would mean perhaps the end of the Empire preferential tariff program. In turn, the U.S. would have to reconsider its own tariff structure from stem (1922 Fordney-McCumber Act) to stern (1930 Smoot-Hawley Act).

The Declaration of Intentions would expand, into terms as concrete as possible, Article IV of the Roosevelt-Churchill Atlantic Charter: "They [the U.S. and Britain] will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity."

Root of present difficulties is in the phrase insisted on by the British Cabinet --"with due respect for their existing obligations." The phrase, as New York Timesman. James B. Reston wrote: ". . . has troubled those officials who believe that a real economic peace can be obtained only if all the powerful nations of the world are prepared to reconsider their 'existing obligations.' "

* Working with the British in the U.S. are Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Under Secretary Sumner Welles, Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson, and the division that handled the reciprocal trade agreements. Working with the British in London is U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant.

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