In the Balance

In the Christian calendar, Palm Sunday is a day on which hope contends with despair. The faithful express their joy in commemoration of Christ's entry into Jerusalem; they remember, in Lenten sorrow, His Crucifixion.

The world, on Palm Sunday 1948, was gripped by the contest between hope and despair. It was symbolized in two cities of faith, Rome and Jerusalem. In Roman churches, amid a fateful battle to save Italy from Communism (see FOREIGN NEWS), priests substituted olive branches for the usual palm branches, to express their hope that peace would prevail. In Jerusalem, the tradition?.! procession from Bethany to Jerusalem's gate was canceled, because of the new spurt of fighting in the Holy Land.

No Fire Extinguisher? President Harry Truman's words, committing the U.S. to see the fight against Communism through to the bitter end, heartened antiCommunists. Greece's Premier Themistocles Sophoulis called the speech "a beacon of hope." But many Europeans, who had expected the U.S. to draw a geographic line against Communist expansion and back it with a military guarantee, were disappointed and wondered what could happen next. Wrote the London Times: "If the American Congress and people, already excited and alarmed, do not respond promptly and in full to [this] appeal for practical measures, more harm than good may well be done. Flames already high will be fanned, and the fire extinguisher will still not be fashioned. . . . But if the politicians and citizens of the U.S. do respond with firm deeds . . . new history will be made. . . ."

Communist reaction was significant. In Prague, the speech was suppressed. In Moscow, the press gave it 18 lines on the day after its delivery. At Lake Success, Andrei Gromyko unwittingly made the funniest comment of an intensely serious week. The speech, he said, was "propaganda for internal American consumption."

Amid Weeping Willows. In Brussels, the Foreign Ministers of Belgium, France, Britain, The Netherlands and Luxemburg signed their 50-year military and economic alliance (TIME, March 22). In Paris, 16 delegates of the Marshall Plan nations settled down in the quiet Hotel Royal Monceau, to work out controlling statutes for ERP, hoped to be finished in three weeks. In Stockholm's Kanslihuset (meaning Chancellery), which is aptly surrounded by weeping willows, the Prime Ministers of Sweden, Norway and Denmark met to confer on the Communist threat their countries face. Hitherto, they had carefully avoided antagonizing the Reds; last week Sweden's Social Democratic Premier Tage Erlanger said: "Communism . . . has placed itself outside the democratic community. The fight against Communism . . . will become part of the guarding of liberty and independence in Sweden."

The words were brave but belated. The balance between hope and despair was still precarious.

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