The Sickening Circles

John Foster Dulles was lucky: he could get away, at least for a few days, from the room in Lancaster House where the air was thick with boredom, and stale mental sweat. While his boss, Secretary of State George Marshall, stuck it out in London, Dulles went to Paris to take a look at France's battle against the Communists (see FOREIGN NEWS). In London, the Foreign Ministers were still hammer-locked in a weary, heavy-breathing propaganda match. Day after day, Vyacheslav Molotov untiringly obstructed any specific action on the peace treaties for Germany and Austria; at the same time he spent hours denouncing the U.S. for sabotaging the peace.

By the ninth day, George Marshall had had enough.

10% of the Unknown. He wanted to pin Molotov down to a specific stand on each issue, or else make it plain to the world that the Russians had no intention of writing a peace treaty. As the translator rattled off Marshall's words, Molotov went into a huddle with Andrei Vishinsky, scurried through documents, snapped open briefcases. The sound of fluttering paper was sharp in the room.

For his first point of attack, Marshall chose Russia's refusal to say clearly what she considered to be "German assets in Austria." The Potsdam conference of July 1945 agreed that Russia could have German assets in Austria. For two years the Red Army has been seizing as German assets anything it felt like, without giving the Allies a specific list of properties. Some of the properties grabbed by the Russians as German assets really belong to Austrians, in the U.S.-British view. Said Marshall: "Exactly what is it the Soviet Union wants from Austria? What properties, interests or values? . . . Both the Austrian people and the Allies are entitled to know what the claim is."

Molotov merely repeated that, according to the Potsdam pact, Russia was entitled to German assets in Austria.

Yes, but what did that amount to? Ernie Bevin wanted to know. Russia was willing to take 10% less, Molotov replied. "Ten percent less than what?" asked Bevin. Molotov, (deadpan): "Ten percent less than has been agreed at Potsdam."

Wail Amid the Woodwinds. The Austrian treaty draft was set aside. Marshall turned to Germany. Molotov repeated (for German consumption) his demand for a strong central German government. One weary U.S. delegate reported that he could not even go to the opera without hearing a voice wailing amid the woodwinds: "The Soviet Union demands a liberal, democratic, peace-loving central government for all Germany."

Marshall made the U.S. position clear: "Before the council decides on the kind of government to be set up in Germany, we must agree on the common principles in Germany necessary to enable a government to function effectively. In my opinion, these include: the basic freedom for the individual; the abolition of zonal boundaries, except as delineation of occupation areas, with no hindrance to the free flow of persons, ideas and goods throughout the whole of Germany; and a clear determination of the economic burdens the German people are to bear. Any German government called upon to administer a Germany divided as it is today by the policies of the occupying powers would be a sham. . . ."

Molotov thanked Marshall for his brevity, called it an example to be emulated, then took up an hour and 35 minutes of the council's time. At exhausting length he said little except that the U.S. was trying to sabotage establishment of a liberal, democratic, peace-loving central government for all Germany. Exasperated, Marshall finally asked Molotov to produce over the weekend a specific statement of his stand.

Moiotov duly delivered a statement which was somewhat more specific and a shade more conciliatory than his earlier diatribes. But its main point still was Russia's old demand for $10 billion reparations from Germany, to which the Western powers were not prepared to agree.

Said France's Georges Bidault: "We are simply going around in circles, a process which tends to make one sick."

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