Beaver-Berle Progress

For four long days last week Lord Beaverbrook, Britain's Cabinet member-in-charge-of-aviation, the U.S. State Department's Assistant Secretary Adolf Berle, and seven other U.S. and British aviation "experts" talked over a pink-blottered mahogany table in the lime green, fresco-ceilinged conference room of London's ancient Gwydyr House (where The Beaver keeps his office as Lord Privy Seal). On the fifth day, The Beaver issued a vague press statement. So plushily vague was the statement that the dignified New York Times' London Bureau Head Raymond Daniell let fly with a parody of the diplomatic double talk.

The main on-the-record result of the talks, cabled Daniell sarcastically, was "that, while Mr. Berle and Lord Beaverbrook had not come to any agreement upon . . . any ... of the specific problems, they had agreed that the appearance of agreement on the basis of an understanding in the future was important enough to justify postponing the decisions until later." Reporters who flocked to a Beaver-Berle press conference the next day felt the same way: one U.S. correspondent was so annoyed that he shouted that the two gentlemen's combined efforts had produced "not a line worth printing," and slammed out of the room.

This was overdrawn. The press conference had produced an admission by The Beaver, usually a tough-minded Empire man, that "we've had to make concessions." The British took pains to describe Mr. Berle as an equally tough U.S. negotiator. Now Mr. Berle told the press: "We've made some concessions, too." The impression was that the following points had been agreed; if so, it meant real progress:

P: Britain's desire for a tight International Air Transport Authority is much too restrictive for the U.S., which had 80% of the world's commercial air business before the war. But there should at least be an international body to set up technical flying standards (meteorology, landing-field and safety specifications, etc.). P: Government subsidies should be kept at a minimum and never used, as Berle put it, "to knock someone else out of the air."

P: The ownership of strategic bases is not nearly so important as permission to use them. (Some reporters went so far as to predict that the U.S. would consent to exchanging some of its vast supply of commercial planes in return for rights to use some of Britain's bases.)

For the layman there was one clear and simple item of news: "Freedom of the Air," a high-sounding phrase that has mixed up a lot of plain citizens in their air-thinking, is now dead. Despite its wide touting by Henry Wallace and other quick thinkers, literal "Freedom of the Air" would only be possible if the whole world were under one government. No nation in its right mind now contemplates allowing other nations to fly through its sovereign skies at will.

Oil Talk Begins

There are two big new facts about the U.S. and international oil. One was widely publicized last week, one was still in the realm of whispering Washington dope--but the two were closely interwoven. The facts:

P: The long-awaited U.S.-British oil conferences will begin this week.

P: Harold Ickes' much-mooted Government-owned pipeline across Arabia (TIME, Feb. 14 et seq.) will probably die aborning.

If the pipeline is really dead, the U.S. State Department was mainly responsible for killing it. Ignoring the technical problems and the opposition of most of the U.S. oil industry, State refused to consider any concrete Government oil project until after the diplomatic generalities were over. State (plus the oil-wise Navy, which is pro-pipeline but anti-Ickes) now hopes it can achieve the pipeline's purposes without the pipeline.

First Teams. Trouble is that, with all the intramural pulling & hauling, the U.S. still has no oil-wise first team to throw into the crucial conversations with the British. It has a Cabinet-level committee newly appointed by the President--but these "preliminary and exploratory discussions" are supposed to be "on an expert technical level." And Britain's first team of "technicians" is a powerhouse, includes Britain's Secretary of the Home Security Ministry and Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade Sir William Brown, Anglo-Iranian Oil's Chairman Sir William Fraser, one of Royal Dutch Shell's Managing Directors, Sir Frederick Godber, etc.

The British Government's oilmen and the British oil industry have long been almost indistinguishable. But the Roosevelt Administration still behaves as if it were a sign of original sin for the U.S. Government and U.S. oil companies to sit down together.

First Principles. Nonetheless, when the two nations face each other across a State Department table, the U.S. delegates will at least have a sound set of first principles on which to bargain. Chief among them:

P: There must be an "orderly development" of Middle Eastern oil properties, with due regard for the economic interests of local governments. This means recognition by the British, in terms of production and not in profitless concessions, that the U.S. has somewhere near an equal interest in the area.

P: There must be an "Atlantic Chartering" of world oil markets. This State Department phrase means that such market restrictions as may be necessary to avoid wasteful international competition must be arrived at by Government-sponsored trade agreements, and not by private intercompany collusion.

Dollars & Diplomacy. The probable death of the Ickes version of an Arabian pipeline does not mean that the U.S. has abandoned Arabian oil. It merely means that the line is not likely to be Government-owned.

But the U.S. oil industry's need for strong Government help abroad, particularly in the Middle East, has always been more a matter of diplomacy than dollars. If the State Department can persuade the British to sign international conventions guaranteeing fair and full development of U.S. concessions along with their own, one main excuse for any direct Government interest in oil would no longer exist.

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