State of War

Shocked and frightened, the world bristled at its bristling statesmen. Who was guilty, and why? Somewhere within the maze of contradiction was the "real" nature of international relations, the "real" shape of the future.

Truth v. Truth. V. M. Molotov ("The Hammer") was pale and vexed. He had obviously figured all along that the Western Powers would not let the London conference fail. Many times Molotov had walked figuratively, and once actually, to the conference door. The other delegates had refused to give in and call him back. Until the very last he had always come back, and to the last futile hour he had seemed to expect that they would yield. Now he told the world the "truth" (according to the U.S.S.R.): Russia, in objecting to the participation of France and China in Balkan treaty discussions, had merely followed the letter of the rules made by the heads of state at Potsdam. The foreign ministers had no right to alter the Potsdam decision--that only the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and Britain, which had signed the Balkan armistice terms, should draft the Balkan treaties. An agreement was an agreement, said aggrieved Mr. Molotov, and to save the conference he had been willing to do anything except break the agreement.

A vastly different "truth" (according to the U.S.) came from Secretary of State Byrnes. In a tone as aggrieved as Molotov's, Byrnes pointed to another sentence in the Potsdam communique which allowed the Council to set up its own procedures, invite other nations into the treaty discussions. On Sept. 11 the London Council unanimously adopted a resolution permitting all five ministers to discuss the treaties, but leaving the final decisions to the Big Three. For ten days Russia did not object. Then Molotov suddenly insisted on changing the procedure, excluding France and China, and afterward rejected every offer of compromise.

Britain's Bevin had the same story. Moscow's Izvestia barked that these explanations were "not in accordance with reality," added that all who disagreed with Molotov refused "to recognize the real situation." The same old quarrels about meanings were on again.

Parable in Poznan. Important as they were to Russia and to Europe, the Balkan treaties in themselves were not enough to drive the Big Powers so far toward fission. One evident reality was that Molotov did not want to defend Russia's oppressive Balkan regimes before too big an audience; his objecting to French and Chinese participation was his way of avoiding that unpleasant task.

An equally evident, and more important, reality was that the real question was one of principle, not of procedure. Here, too, each side had its own truth; even its own vocabulary. The U.S. and Britain, promising democracy to the Rumanians and Bulgars, had meant by "democracy" a set of practices and guarantees by which the majority would rule. The Russians, insisting that "democracy" already prevailed in the Balkans, meant that the majority good was being served; to them, the rule or even the consent of the majority was beside the question. U.S. and British inability to accept this definition could only mean, in Russia's view, that her wartime Allies were sabotaging Russia's postwar policy and security.

A dispatch from Poland last week perfectly illustrated this semantic and ideological gap. When a planeload of U.S. flyers landed at Poznan to decorate a fallen American's grave, the local Red Army commandant told U.S. Colonel Walter Pashley: "Theoretically, you should be interned for landing at our airport in violation of the rules of war." Replied Colonel Pashley, through an interpreter: "Ask him, what war? The war is over."

Retorted the commandant, a Red Army colonel: "There is a state of war here."

And so there was, for the Russians. Of all World War II's principal combatants, only Americans were still under the illusion that the war really ended, or that victory was really won, on the battlefield.

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