What's All This?

Russia loomed ever larger in the news and minds of the western world. From San Francisco to Stockholm the people and statesmen of the west felt the impact of Soviet power. Uncertainly, as though some incredible anticlimax were in the making, the west measured its own power. Except at explosive Trieste (see below), the deployments were diplomatic. Men gazed at each other across their ramparts, so lately raised in common victory, and said: Why, what's all this?

The incredible was, nevertheless, understandable. A new, revolutionary power taking a new position in the world meant new strains, all the more severe because they were bound to come. In Asia, where the Soviet Union's full impact was yet to be felt, the stresses were latent but nonetheless real (see FOREIGN NEWS). In Europe, Russia's active emergence made the principal points of strain all too obvious last week (see map).

Russian troops in Norway's arctic Finnmark, others on Denmark's island of Bornholm near the vital Kiel Canal, a Soviet blast at Stockholm for a Swedish newspaper's jibes at Stalin--all these signified the U.S.S.R.'s interest in the Baltic area and its outlet to the Atlantic. In part, the jockeying for position in occupied Germany also reflected Russia's Baltic concerns. From Poland, where Stalin last week refused to give an inch, to the Dardanelles, Turkey's outlet from Russia's Black Sea, the pattern of power hardened.

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