Bermuda Breezes

In Moscow one night last week, the handful of Western newsmen got an extraordinary summons to the Foreign Ministry on Smolensk Square. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had scheduled the first Moscow press conference held by any Soviet official for foreign correspondents since 1947. Encased in the standard double-breasted blue suit and standing sternly beneath a portrait of Stalin, Molotov faced the press and raced through a twelve-page statement in Russian.

He was plainly worried by the way the West had responded to the Soviet's new hard line (TIME, Nov. 16). It would not do to let it be seen so plainly that it was the Russians, not the stubborn Americans, who were frustrating a Big Four meeting on Germany. "The urgency of the foreign ministers' conference is by no means diminished," insisted Molotov, trying to throw the onus back on to the West.

What seemed to disturb Molotov most was the Western powers' decision to sit down among themselves next fortnight in Bermuda, when Churchill, Eisenhower and France's Joseph Laniel will get together for the first time since Ike became President. "Conferences of this kind . . . tend to put certain states in opposition to other states . . ." Molotov complained.

As a matter of fact, if Churchill has his way, Bermuda will be a forerunner of talks with Malenkov. Churchill has been longing for a Big Three chat ever since he was denied Big Four talks. Now the Big Three at least would meet, but under a particularly nullifying circumstance. Laniel will be able to speak only for a lame-duck government which must automatically dissolve when France elects a new President --within ten days to a month after the Bermuda meeting.

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