Peace

In the first week of Allied victory, the Allied world dared to name its fear. The London Economist, long a bulwark of Anglo-Russian friendship, publicly examined the alternatives to a break with the Soviet Union. Ely Culbertson, a U.S.

bridge expert who considers bridge his hobby and international psychology his business, said in his latest plan for world security: "War between the United States and Russia would be the catastrophe of centuries." The wiser diplomats at San Francisco understood the United Nations conference for what it mainly was: an attempt to devise a system wherein the Soviet Union and the western nations could live peaceably together.

It was also a week when conflict was farthest from the common will of com mon men. Plain Russians in Moscow, bursting with good will, impartially hoist ed British and Russian soldiers and car ried them through Red Square. U.S. sol diers and correspondents in Germany found only the warmest friendliness when they managed to break past official barriers and meet Russian soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of letters came every day to the U.S. delegates at San Francisco, saying that the conference must find a way to peace. Ordinary Britons and Americans wanted as never before to under stand Russia, and found it harder than ever to do so. Sadly, they were dis covering that victory in Europe had done nothing to lessen the tensions among the victors.

Spheres in the Wasteland. Conquered Germany was sure to be a troublesome prize. The Germans themselves were doing all in their power to make it so (see The Occupation). But the conquerors hardly needed the Germans' assistance. The plan of occupation was enough.

That plan divided Germany into four parts, under four occupation governments: Russia in Berlin and the East (less the Silesian and East Prussian areas to be given to the Soviet Union's new Poland) ; the U.S. in Bavaria, in the South; Britain in a central and western area including Leipzig, Dusseldorf, and the ports of Bremen and Hamburg on the strategic North Sea coastline ; France in the Rhineland (all of the areas were still to be defined exactly).

The theory of occupation was that an Allied commission representing all four powers could treat Germany as one country under one government. On paper, the arrangement was perfect: General Eisen hower for the U.S., and Russian, British and French members yet to be named would clear all common questions, send common directives to the four sub-govern ments. The first purpose of this technically coordinated quartering was to keep Germany impotent. Wisely applied by powers solely devoted to that aim, it might achieve the purpose. But defeated Germany was something more than a nation to be held down: it was also a focal area in the never-ending contest for power in Europe, and the world.*

Britain and the Soviet Union, reshaping and building up their spheres of influence in eastern and western Europe, stood toe-to-toe in occupied Germany. Weakened France, nervously balancing its position in the west against the new power in the east, was using its claims to a share of Germany as a bargaining point with both Britain and Russia. The U.S., well into an unfamiliar game, had based its occupation plans (see below) on the assumption that Germany was to be solely an occupation problem. Now, before the occupation was well begun, that assumption was dead.

Spheres in San Francisco. The same contest was much in evidence at the San Francisco conference. As every delegate realized, the purpose of the conference was not to end the contest, but to agree on rules that might keep it within peaceful bounds.

Dumbarton Oaks, the Big Powers' draft of a world charter, rested on the premise that the way to keep the peace was to let the chief contestants make and administer the rules with a minimum of interference and assistance from lesser powers. After three weeks of world debate in San Francisco, this proposition was still intact. But it had undergone some severe strains.

Americans inclined to dismiss or shun the looming contest for world power would have done well to ponder the principal questions raised in San Francisco last week.

The small and middle-sized powers made a little progress--a very little--in their efforts to win a larger share of authority in the forthcoming world organization. But every move to spread the power among all the member nations was offset by a move to limit its actual use by or against any nation, big or small. At the showdowns, the U.S. was as sensitive as the

Soviet Union to any proposal to restrict any Big Power's final freedom of action. Alone among the Big Three, the British delegation showed a real desire for anything approaching real collective action and security. The alternative was the document slowly emerging in San Francisco--a charter for a world divided into power spheres.

Historic Insistence. Last week the U.S. and its immediate sphere were involved in hot debate. The question: whether the Pan American system erected by the U.S. and its Latin American neighbors should be subject to the .world Security Council, and through the Council to the veto power of any Big Five member.

Involved in this issue, as everyone had foreseen at the recent Pan American conference in Mexico City (TIME, March 5 et seq.), was the Monroe Doctrine's historic insistence upon the independence and political self-sufficiency of the Western Hemisphere (excluding Canada). When

Dumbarton Oaks was drafted, the U.S. subscribed to its clear declaration that action under any regional arrangement should be subject to the Security Council. At Mexico City, Secretary of State Stet-tinius dodged the question by postponing it to San Francisco. At San Francisco last week, it rose to haunt him.

The Latin delegates, feeling the muscle of their 20 conference votes, unanimously demanded complete freedom from any-check or supervision by the Security Council. Senators Connally and Vandenberg, well aware of the Monroe Doctrine's sacrosanct appeal to the Senate, felt that some concession to the turbulent Latins was necessary if the charter was to be ratified.

Harold Stassen, genuinely devoted to the idea of world security through world action, stiffly opposed the Latin recalcitrants and told them they were getting beyond themselves. The delegation's quiet Republican adviser, John Foster Dulles, saw that a free rein to Pan American regionalism would mean a free rein to Soviet regionalism, and therefore felt that the Latins were doing a grave disservice to all the western world. Ed Stettinius, unwilling or unable to club his Latin friends into line, sought a formula which would appease them without completely sacrificing the principle of world control.

Snapped a European foe of regionalism: "The trouble with you Americans is, you don't know your own power. You don't know how strong you are."

Toward the Mat. The conference still had many serious problems to meet and solve. But, so far, no problem in writing the charter had proven insoluble; a compromise had invariably been found.

Last week Russia's Molotov, having stayed longer than he originally intended, packed up and flew. Anthony Eden, tugged homeward by domestic politics and the pressing demands of victory, decided to leave San Francisco before the regional issue was settled. En route, he expected to pause in Washington for a talk with President Truman.*The U.S. and British Ambassadors to Moscow, Averell Harriman and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, also left San Francisco. With them went the pervasive, far-from-settled Polish issue, still the sorest point of dispute between the Big Three. A commentary on the state of Big Power relations was Averell Harriman's state of mind when he headed back to Moscow. Harriman, usually a mild fellow, was ready to.go to the mat.

*This week the U.S. and British stiffly asked Yugoslavia's Communist Marshal Tito to withdraw his forces from the disputed port of Trieste, relinquish it to Allied control until the rival claims of Italy and Yugoslavia can be settled at the postwar peace table.

*Reports that Harry Truman was soon to have his first meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin reached such a pitch that Eden's Foreign Office took notice, called the stories "unfounded rumors."

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