Optimism, Ltd.

"An area of agreement has been reached," said the Paris reports one minute. Next minute the word was: "Complete deadlock." The outcome of the Big Four talks at Paris was still uncertain (see below), but it remained probable that the Russians wanted a limited settlement in Europe. They wanted it not because they had stopped being Communists committed to world revolution, but because Communist progress in Europe had been checked while Communist progress in Asia was rolling right along.

Cabled TIME'S Paris Bureau Chief Andre Laguerre: "If any agreement comes out of this conference, it will only reflect the realities of the present position; it will not create new realities. The fact is that in Europe the West is stronger than Russia. Either the Russians, who are usually realists, will accept that fact and make a deal favorable to the West, or they will refuse to accept it, and keep on fighting the cold war, in which case they ought to get progressively weaker in Europe."

Peace in Our Time? Awareness of the Russian position brought words of optimism from President Harry Truman last week (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) and Winston Churchill. Said Churchill in London: "There was a time in 1935 and 1936 when I used to hear . . . 'ancestral voices prophesying war!' But now I am thankful to say I do not hear those voices ... I have a growing hope that by the strength of our united civilization, and by our readiness and preparedness to defend freedom with our lives, we may avert forever the horrible vision of a third world war."

These were not imprudent hopes, and they were ardently shared by all the West. Nevertheless, there were signs last week that the West must guard against overestimating Russia's strictly limited desire for settlement. One such sign was furnished by United Nations World, a monthly magazine not officially connected with the U.N. but devoted to U.N. affairs. In an article quoted by major U.S. newspapers, the magazine said that Russia had decided on a major policy shift towards peace with the West. Andrei Gromyko, explained the U.N. World, had persuaded Joseph Stalin that the U.S. did not want war and that U.S. economic aid to Russia and Eastern Europe might be forthcoming if Moscow offered a genuine demonstration of good will. The Politburo, after heated debate, had accepted the "Gromyko Plan."

U.N. World claimed to know all this from certain Eastern European sources who had access to Moscow directives, but whose identity "it would be neither prudent nor proper to disclose."

Heads Against the Wall? Washington believed that the story in U.N. World was based on a plant, probably by the Polish or Czech delegation at U.N. Its purpose: to help persuade U.S. opinion that the Atlantic pact was unnecessary. The Atlantic pact is still a great concern of Russian propagandists; a recent Krokodil cartoon showed Uncle Sam launching human torpedoes--Winston Churchill and John Foster Dulles--from a submarine labeled Atlantic Pact (see cut).

Russia's desire to go to Paris had not resulted from any sudden realization that the U.S. wants peace; Russian leaders must have known that all along. Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith last week recalled a revealing remark Stalin had made when Smith was U.S. Ambassador in Moscow. Stalin had told him: "We do not want war any more than the West does, but we are less interested in peace than the West, and therein lies the strength of our position."

What "peace" means to the Russians was well summarized in a lecture on "organized retreat" which a Russian major gave in Berlin last week. Said he: "If the enemy is stronger, one must not run his head against a wall but wait and, after a breathing space, attack again and destroy."

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