Too Soon?

Last week's events in Moscow, London and Washington made it plain that the "United Nations" were simply not ready for a world security conference.

Everywhere the climate of opinion abruptly changed: some pessimists even doubted that the conference would open on schedule (April 25) in San Francisco, and the hopes for what it might accomplish steadily lessened. In part, this depression was the result of a belated awakening to the actual, power-political nature of the Dumbarton Oaks scheme for world security. But the news that the Russians were sending a second-rate delegation, that the Big Three had been finagling with the voting rules of the proposed world assembly (see below) was equally discouraging to hardened diplomats and to ordinary people bemused by the rosy propaganda for Dumbarton Oaks.

Sickly Mood. A wider, clearer understanding that the postwar system proposed for the world was in fact a strong-arm system, recognizing and resting on Big Three power, would have been all to the good. But last week's happenings made only for cynicism, doubt, and further misunderstanding.

Typified by Argentina (see LATIN AMERICA), the crowding of belated neutrals and unsavory regimes to San Francisco's door heightened the sickly mood. A New York cartoonist pen-pointed the prevalent mistrust with a Satanic vision of Hitler and Hirohito (see cut), united for the peace and chortling: "You declare war on me, I declare war on you and we both go to San Francisco."

A Russian Is Missing. Moscow announced Russia's San Francisco delegation last week, and it did not include Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov. Washington, London, Paris instantly leaped to the blackest conclusion: Stalin just didn't give a damn.

There were other possible reasons: Molotov already had more than he could do, what with the German problem coming up, the Polish problem unsettled, the known shortage of qualified personnel in the U.S.S.R.'s foreign services. Certainly Stalin did not attach as much importance to the world conference as Churchill and Roosevelt did, or the Marshal would have let nothing stand in the way of Molotov's joining Eden and Stettinius at San Francisco. This week London dispatches reported that Eden might attend briefly, and perhaps not at all. In its mood of international depression last week, Washington uneasily wondered whether Stalin could be right--whether, all other considerations aside, the conference had been called too early and had been vastly oversold.

A workmanlike group, probably not authorized to make binding decisions, will represent Moscow. All but two of the eight delegates were at Dumbarton Oaks; all speak English. Among them:

P: Ambassador to the U.S. Andrei A. Gromyko, rated as one of Washington's canniest diplomats, heads the delegation.

P: Tall, slender Semion K. Tsarapkin heads the Foreign Commissariat's Section of American Affairs, was formerly its chief Far Eastern expert.

P: Round-faced, balding Arkady Sobolev, Minister Counsellor to the Soviet delegation on the European Advisory Commission in London.

P: Dark, stocky, amiable K. V. Novikov is in charge of British relations, was formerly counsellor of Russia's London Embassy.

P: Two advisors on international law are Professors Sergei Krylov (Moscow University) and Sergei Golunsky (Academy of Science).

P: The military spokesmen are Admiral Konstantin Rodionov and a Red Army political expert, Lieut. General Adrian Vasiliev, who now heads the Soviet military mission in Britain.

Healthy Failure? Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill were doing none too well among themselves. On the most troublesome issue up for immediate Big Three settlement, they and their respective spokesmen had deadlocked.

To nobody's surprise, that issue was Poland. At Yalta, the Big Three had agreed in principle to concert their policies on the new Poland, replace Russia's Lublin lackeys with a government which would be fairly representative and suit the U.S. and Britain as well as the U.S.S.R. After a month of negotiation in Moscow, Molotov had not given an inch to British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr and U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman. They wanted an honestly reorganized government, representing all Poles except those hopelessly hostile to Russia. Mr. Molotov was willing to enlarge the government, but only with Poles acceptable to the original Lubliners.

There matters stood last week, when the Soviet Government suddenly demanded that the U.S. and Britain in effect recognize the present Warsaw (ex-Lublin) Government by admitting it to the San Francisco conference. Britain flatly refused. So, less flatly and after much thought, did the U.S.

Up to this point, the Big Three had failed to make the principles of Yalta work in Poland. But it had been an honorable failure, and it was not yet final. A show of U.S. and British firmness, long overdue in dealings with Russia, might turn out to be healthy for all concerned.

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