Four in a Tower

In the animal kingdom the period of gestation is roughly proportionate to the weight of the species.

As the Big Four gathered at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria this week, the world was uncomfortably conscious that the advent of peace was still, 18 months after V-E day, 15 months after V-J day, not imminent. Could analogy support the hope that this peace was long-deferred because its issues were weightier and, therefore, less likely to be tossed aside?

World War I's peace was signed, sealed and delivered seven and a half months after the Armistice. By the standards of 1946, Versailles was a superficial peace, uncandidly attained. The very complexities and long-range suspicions which the world resented in 1946-style peacemaking were at least signs that the four Foreign Ministers faced the problems. It was, of course, important that a settlement be reached quickly; but it was more important that a settlement be made that would last.

Clearing the Air. At Paris, Russia and the West had struggled over seemingly picayune points of the treaties with Italy, Finland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria. Yet all the issues had a bearing on the fate of all Europe, set the framework for the critical struggle over the German treaty. The Big Four at the Waldorf were likely to reach the German treaty in an atmosphere greatly clarified since six months ago.

On the thorny, technical subject of reparations, which was tied in with the more important political question of a unified Germany, Russia last week seemed to move much nearer the West's position. Russia had already removed $2,500,000,000 worth of capital goods from Germany. Further removals were not advisable, for they would impair current production in the Soviet zone (from which Russia is taking $35 million worth each month). At the same time the Soviet zone needed steel from the western zones, which the U.S. and Britain would deliver only on one condition: lowering of zonal barriers to permit a flow of trade and genuinely coordinated four-power control throughout Germany.

Thus the Russians, after a year of incessant obstruction, were finally ready to cooperate, even though a unified Germany would mean a setback for Communism. In Berlin's Allied Control Council, the U.S. and Russia last week started "informal" discussions about raising the level of German industrial output.

Amid the popular clamor for a quick peace and an end to bickering, the sharper observers saw plainly that if the U.S. and Britain had not been frank and firm and patient with Russia in the Allied Control Council for Germany and on the Eastern European treaties, the chances of an enduring German settlement would be slimmer than they are.

In the Dusk. That was the background of the meeting of Byrnes, Molotov, Bevin and France's Couve de Murville amid the yellow chairs and croton plants in the apartment lent to the Ministers by the Waldorf's fastidious board chairman, Lucius M. Boomer.

There the peacemakers got down to business at the hour of cocktails and small fears, just as the lights went on in the skyscrapers under the bluish dusk. Beyond the flickering neon signs lay Long Island, where the U.N.'s General Assembly worked hard and late. But Long Island now was hidden in the mist; and the U.N. Assemblymen were only satellite peacemakers, providently relegated to a satellite town. Progress, if any, toward the birth of peace would be made in the Waldorf Tower, on the 37th floor.

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