The Chances of World War III

The most useful activity possible for men and nations in 1948 was the prevention of World War III. Last week the rate of that activity took a spurt. If it could be increased about ten times and maintained at that higher level for about 15 years, the chances of avoiding World War III would be good.

World War III would come a lot closer if world Communism grew in power to the point where it felt able to attack the U.S. Since World War II ended, Communism's power had grown faster than any rise in Hitler's power between 1933 and 1939. The Communists were not the X in the equation. Their intention to rule the world had been proclaimed a thousand times, and their strength under various circumstances could be fairly accurately forecast. The unknown quantity was the Western world. How seriously would the West try to resist the Communist expansion? How ably would it go about that resistance?

Last week the West's intention looked firmer, its ability brighter than in many months--which was faint praise.

Ten Days That Shook the Diplomats. U.S. Ambassador to Britain Lewis W. Douglas emerged last week from an international conference and said: "In ten days more progress has been made than in the preceding three years." If Douglas was right, the Communist kidnaping of Czechoslovakia had cost Russia more in ten days than it would get out of Czechoslovakia in ten years.

Douglas was speaking of an "agreement in principle" between six Western nations on what to do with Germany (see below). It had been reached at long last when the U.S., goaded by the Czech crisis, stepped up pressure on France. The same Czech crisis had spurred the French to the realization that they had at least as much to fear from Russia as from Germany. Even plainer was the fact that only closest cooperation between the Western powers, including the U.S., could protect France from either Germany or Russia.

Other ripples from the Czech crisis last week reached Brussels, where five Western European nations made rapid progress toward a defensive military alliance. All over Western Europe politicians and plain people were talking unity--military, economic and political.

Perils Ahead. Dangers, both immediate and long-range, were scarcely dispelled by these hopeful actions. Finland was threatened today; Austria might be next; Italy would go through a crucial test in its April 18 elections. Wherever the Communists took power by election, they made sure, as in Poland, that they would never lose it by election. And when they lost elections, as in Czechoslovakia, they sought other roads to power. The democracies had to win every kind of contest every time in every country. The Communists only had to win once; then the country was withdrawn from contest, and could be liberated only by revolution or war.

The chances of World War III depended on the outcome of a whole series of struggles. Europe obviously could not be won without U.S. dollars, but it surely would not be won by dollars alone. What would it take? From anxious London, TIME'S Bureau Chief John Osborne outlined an answer:

"If the Marshall Plan were solely a matter of dollars-&-cents investment for fair return, we would do well to scrap it now. On its present scale and design Marshall aid cannot ensure the permanent rehabilitation of Europe. It is too little, and it is probably too late, to do more than slow the economic decline which brought it into being.

"But this is not the whole answer. The Marshall Plan is also political in purpose. As a counter to Communism in Western Europe it has already been worth more than it will ever cost us. It will continue to repay us many times over if it postpones Europe's disintegration and totalitarian engulfment.

"Whether we can save Europe now or not, in our own defense we are compelled to try; in the process we may encourage Europeans to fashion a Europe worth defending for themselves and for us. This effort requires among other things a lot of the resources represented by our dollars--and a reasonable amount of applied intelligence.

"We must learn to put more of this last ingredient to work in the right places and in the right ways. We must, above all, avoid the kind of mistake which in 1944 and 1945 led us to throw away enormous assets of democratic good will in liberated Europe. We were then under the illusion that war is a merely military operation; we conceivably might not be voting Marshall money this year if four years ago we had possessed a political field force equal in talent and capacity to our military commands and forces in Europe. The equivalent mistake in 1948 would be to leave the execution of the Marshall Plan to businessmen, economists and kindred specialists. We must summon the finest political intelligence that we can assemble, arm it with adequate tools and direction, and place it in the field with our dollars.

"The overriding fear in Europe today is not that we will intervene (or "interfere") ; but that we will fail to intervene with sufficient intelligence and in sufficient force when and where our interests and Europe's interests clearly demand that we do."

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