"If Your Wind Is Right"

A race against a "monstrous catastrophe" (the phrase was Premier Paul Ramadier's) began last week in Paris. The air in the Grande Salle a Manger du Ministre (which has eight huge chandeliers and only four windows) was bad; but the diplomatic atmosphere was better than at any international conference since the war's end. The delegates seemed permeated with the realization that they had to move fast to turn the "Marshall approach" into a plan for Europe; if they did not, the price of peace would go up and the hope of peace would go down (see WHAT PRICE PEACE?).

Britain's Ernest Bevin, chosen president of the conference, was hopeful. "If you're off to a good start, and your wind is right," he said, "you are likely to finish." When he adjourned the first session, Bevin said: "This is the fastest conference I ever attended."

What the U.S. Wants. Without quibbles, the delegates agreed that their general aim was to promote the "reconstruction and development of European nations," first by selfhelp, as Secretary Marshall had insisted, and then through "the support of the United States, which would be decisive." The U.S., not a participant in the conference, remained well in the background. However, the delegates were learning what the U.S. meant by European selfhelp. Ramadier gave a luncheon for U.S. Under Secretary of State Will Clayton, who has become the world's foremost foe of trade barriers. After that, the delegates began to talk more about removal of European trade barriers.

"A Crazy Situation." The clearest statement of what the conference was supposed to accomplish came not from a delegate, but from a private observer named Albert Kohler, a Swiss textile importer. Kohler's summary reiterated the fact that Germany is the key to European revival. He said:

"Before the war, trainload after trainload of Italian goods rolled through the Saint Gotthard and Simplon tunnels to Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Each year German coal miners and steelworkers received almost half a billion tons of Italian lemons, oranges, pears, apples, wheat flour, rice, olive oil. Italy's textile shipments reached an annual value of more than 2.5 billion lire. In return, Germany sent to Italy between 12 and 15 million tons of coal and more than half a million tons of iron and steel products.

"Today this exchange is disrupted. German coal miners in the Ruhr produce less because they get less food. Italy's fruit and wheat would go a long way to boosting the morale of Ruhr miners and to raising their output. On the other side, German coal and steel would do a lot to improve northern Italy's industrial production.

"Instead, we have a crazy situation whereby the U.S. must send food to Germany and coal to Italy. It's like trying to cure a sick woman by smearing a coat of make-up on her face. American aid must be directed to the root of Europe's trouble; equip European industry with the tools, and production will take care of itself."

The Molotov Plan. Nine nations--the U.S.S.R., Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Albania--had declined invitations to the conference. It was a hard decision for the trade-hungry Czechs; their Communist Premier Klement Gottwald had flown to Moscow, telephoned to the Cabinet at Prague the night the decision was made. "What else could we do?" said a non-Communist official in Prague. For being good, the Czechs got another Russian treaty and a promise of 200,000 tons of wheat.

Sofia wired, with Bulgar bravado, that it could not be bothered with the continental recovery program because it had a more important matter in train, to wit: "[Bulgaria] has already begun the realization of her own economic plan. . . ."

Talk of a "Molotov plan" for Eastern Europe, to counterbalance the "Marshall approach," began to be heard in Europe. Unfortunately for the Molotov plan, what most Eastern European nations needed was machines and manufactured goods, and those were what Russia needed, too.

How did Europe, split by Molotov, now line up? Russia herself had shut herself out of the European economy since the Revolution, but most of the nations that had become Soviet satellites had formerly had economic ties with the rest of Europe. These eight countries have a total population of 87 million. The 16 European countries represented at Paris have a total population of 218 million.

The Nasty Man. So the balance looked bad for Eastern Europe--and some Europeans knew it. Communist censors would not let the Rumanian anti-Communist newspaper. Dreptatea, publish an article urging acceptance of the Paris invitation.

In protest, Dreptatea used up most of its front page to publish a document which contained a remarkable paragraph. It seemed to be an insanely reckless attack on Joseph Stalin. The paragraph:

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to [the following] acts: . . . quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; . . . protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants . . .; cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; . . . transporting us . . . to be tried for pretended offenses; . . . abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of . . . governments."

The nasty man referred to was not Stalin, however, but George III of Britain, and the document which Dreptatea published was, appropriately, the American Declaration of Independence.

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