Peace on the Bargain Counter

Western Europe's Communists moved in on a trend last week. The trend was a backsliding by the crisis-weary people of Western Europe. Judging from its press and politicians, Western Europe wanted peace, right now; a prettily wrapped peace with a money-back guarantee.

A few months before, Western Europeans had been in desperate fear of Soviet aggression. They felt then that a North Atlantic Alliance could not come fast enough. They were willing to make the national sacrifices required by Western Union. There was a sweeping urgency, then, in the idea that the West would have to become strong, stand up to Stalin--that Stalin would respect strength and keep the peace.

A series of recent statements and events in the U.S., especially Truman's appointment of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State, led Western Europeans to assume that U.S. policy toward Russia would become softer. The assumption was wispy; nobody knew whether U.S. policy would soften or not. But the European reaction to the assumption was real. Much of the recent stiffness went out of the man-on-the-street's backbone.

The Communists couldn't have asked for a better setup.

"Don't Get Us Wrong." In Paris, the French National Assembly opened its 1949 session, but things did not fall into their familiar pattern. The 183 Communist deputies had been violent and insulting all last year.* At this session the party emissaries eager-beavered about the lobbies spreading good fellowship. Loud-voiced Arthur Ramette, the Communists' interrupter-heckler, spoke gently: "All we want is peace ... If we sometimes get excited, it's only because we are fighting for peace."

Party Theoretician Jacques Duclos, felled by the flu, got out of bed to stage-manage the exhibition. "Don't get us wrong," he confided between rasping coughs, "we are the most reasonable party. Don't get us wrong . . ."

The star act was assigned to Marcel Cachin, 79-year-old director of L'Humanite. As dean of the Assembly he made the inaugural address. Almost his first remark was a reference to Eisenhower as "that illustrious American soldier." When he quoted Eisenhower's tribute to the French underground, even the Rightists clapped.

The Cachin speech was the more notable because he is the most "regular" of French Communists, always voicing the Moscow line; everybody in the Chamber knew that Marcel Cachin had not had an idea of his own for 40 years. Cachin said:

"There is no such thing as an inevitable war ... Is there not talk once again of a possible meeting between Truman and Stalin? ... If they could work together to conduct a war, it should be easier to work together to maintain peace . . . Allow me to ask my Christian colleagues if they do not agree that we are reaching a point of historical renewal comparable to the end of the pagan domination of the world . . . May this be the year of peace."

"Two Homeric Heroes." A few moments after Cachin had finished, Edouard Herriot was re-elected president of the Assembly. In his acceptance speech he went right on from where Cachin had left off--just as the Communists hoped he and millions of others would do. Russia and the U.S., said Herriot, "face each other in helmeted defiance, two Homeric heroes." The implication: their quarrel is not Western Europe's--Western Europe should become a third force that would strive for a reconciliation between the giants.

While Cachin had been speaking, the Moscow radio was broadcasting that "the nomination of Acheson offers the possibility of a reorientation of American foreign policy," and the Moscow press was playing up an appeal for a Truman-Stalin meeting.

Two days later Acheson appeared before U.S. Senators. Even though he gave a clear impression that there would be no change in U.S. policy, Le Monde of Paris saw fit to comment in general: ". . . The symptoms of a new situation are appearing."

Other papers editorialized the same way, not only in France, but in Belgium, Switzerland and, to a lesser degree, in The Netherlands. Their common sentiment: the vast majority of people feel an angry urge to be rid of war scares; they hope for a renewed conciliatory gesture.

In Italy, the sentiment had not yet broken through the surface so visibly, but the Communists moved fast to help it along. Cachin went to Italy bearing the word. Sure enough, the evening after Cachin arrived, Communist Leader Palmiro Togliatti in a speech at Bologna said "complete" collaboration between East and West was possible. He denied Russia was planning a "revolutionary war." The same day the Reds halted their "campaign of noncollaboration" in the factories. Reports circulated that woolly-minded Giuseppe Saragat was considering a new "unity" bloc between his recently anti-Communist group of Socialists and the Nenni (pro-Stalin) Socialists.

Only in Great Britain did opinion hold firm that the U.S. was not softening its policy. Yet even in Britain the sense of urgency was diminishing. The North Atlantic Alliance had official backing, but the more difficult problems of Western Union had stopped progress toward that "grand design."

Continental Western Europeans had--understandably--a dread of war talk and crisis which acted as a psychological magnifier on every sign from Washington that peace could be won without risk, sacrifice and a constant building up of the unity and strength of the free world.

The Communists noted the magnifier at work--and gloated.

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