Quarter to Eleven

Molotov said "an Anglo-American bloc" was waging "an offensive against the Soviet Union." Peter Orlov, commentator for Radio Moscow, told the Russian people that "American reactionaries are trying to ... [build] up an Anglo-American military bloc . . . for a third World War."

Britons and Americans knew the Russian charges were untrue; but they also sensed last week that the Byrnes-Molotov "debate" (more accurately described as a duet of denunciation) on the Paris conference had put Russia and the West further apart than ever. How serious was the cleavage?

Byrnes's denial of the bloc's existence was true, in the sense that no sane and responsible Britons and Americans planned an attack on the Soviet Union. And Molotov's charge that the bloc existed was true, in the sense that Britain and the U.S. would stand together against major new advances by the expanding U.S.S.R. Neither Washington nor London wanted to close the door to further negotiations, but both thought it was time Moscow did a larger share of the conceding.

If both sides remained where they were last week, there was real danger that the two blocs would harden into the kind of opposition that would make U.N. a futility. If the West gave way again, there was the even greater danger that the Russians would interpret this as weakness.

The peoples of the democracies, and weak nations (which eventually would have to choose sides if the titans should split) could find hope in one thought: that however gruff and bluff nations may act in a serious dispute, they can often reach a settlement at the eleventh hour when they have tested each other's intentions. But it was about quarter to eleven.

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