Cordon Insanitaire?

No surprise to anyone were the terms of the new Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty finally released last week. The pact signed at Moscow, with Joseph Stalin's and Eduard Benes' beaming approval, was first of all a 20-year military alliance, aimed against a specific enemy: Germany. The two Governments bound themselves to make no separate peace deal now, and to exchange full military assistance if either should be attacked by a resurgent Germany. For the postwar period they pledged full economic collaboration and agreed to keep out of each other's internal affairs.

One additional point was considered important enough to stand by itself: "Each of the high contracting powers undertakes not to conclude any alliance and not to take part in any coalition directed against the other contracting power."

Thus Russia once again served notice of her determination to block revival of the old cordon sanitaire idea of unfriendly buffer states between Russia and the west. What western statesmen had to worry about was whether Russia intended to make this impossible by setting up its own form of cordon "insanitaire" among the central and eastern European countries.

Gloom and Room. Technicians noted with gloomy satisfaction that there was a significant difference between the new treaty and the 20-year Anglo-Soviet Alliance of 1942. The British treaty, by its own terms, would be superseded by any overall security pact among the nations. The Czech treaty has no such provision; it is a straight two-way proposition regardless of any general international agreement.

This two-way treaty nevertheless has room to grow in. A special protocol provides for future signature by any victim of German aggression which borders on either Czechoslovakia or Russia. A liberal interpretation of the aggression clause might qualify a free and reconstituted Austria for membership, and both Russians and Czechs unquestionably would like to tie up Austria as another curb on German militarism.

Right now the one country that fits the specifications of the protocol--and fits them like the velvet glove on an iron fist --is Poland. But diplomatic relations between Russia and the Polish Goyernment in Exile have been suspended for months, and neither side seems keen to renew them. Last week the Polish Cabinet called a meeting to discuss the situation, then called it off when Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk was bedded with the flu. Polish press comment took the general line that Poland would be glad to join up, provided the Russians would guarantee Poland's pre-1939 borders--a proposition which the Russians would probably regard as laughable.

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