Journey to a Pink Palace

The Big Four picked a pink palace for the momentous Foreign Ministers Conference which convenes in Paris next week. Known as the Palais Rose, it belongs to the Duchess de Talleyrand-Perigord, formerly Countess de Castellane, formerly Anna Gould. Furniture movers, electricians and telephone men were hard at work to get everything ready. No less hard at work were the Foreign Ministers' advance guard--U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup, Britain's Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, France's Alexandre Parodi--in an attempt to "harmonize" their nations' views on what ought to be the West's strategy.

The Russians meanwhile were giving an increasingly clear indication of what their own strategy would be. All over Europe last week, they trumpeted two slogans. The first was "peace." Andrei Gromyko, who makes news whenever he cracks a smile, left Lake Success for Moscow and remarked: "We have to work for peace, both the Americans and the Russians. They can work together if they want to." Said Moscow's New Times: "The Council of Foreign Ministers could actually become a turning point in the course of postwar settlement."

The second slogan of the week was, "German unity." Considerably more aggressive on this subject, the same issue of New Times denounced the West German State as "colonial in character." In Germany's Russian zone, the Reds drummed up some 10 million people to elect a "People's Congress"--a me-too counterweight to the West German Federal Republic.

In reply to the Russians, the West had a slogan of its own. The slogan was "freedom." The West wanted German unity, too, but only on democratic terms. It certainly wanted peace, but not at any price. Said Britain's Ernest Bevin: "We may even be called 'comrades' again. You never know." Then he added grimly that Russia was still talking peace while carrying on a "policy of promoting unsettlement all around."

The Western powers, on their way to the pink palace, were in top fighting form. They could point to a united Western Europe whose people, American observers believed, were now better off than at any time since 1914 (excepting a few short years of peak prosperity). That was perhaps the West's biggest asset. Wrote London's clear-eyed Economist: "If the victory at Berlin proves anything, it is that the way to deal with the Russians is to make stiff terms and to stick to them inflexibly . . . Firmness is now justified up to the hilt."

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