The Flag Follows Trade

When George Marshall made the historic offer in 1947 to extend massive U.S. aid to help rebuild the shattered economies of friend and foe alike, the prostrate Soviet-occupied states of Eastern Europe responded with enthusiasm. But before their delegations could pack their scuffed suitcases and head West, Moscow thundered its veto of Commu nist participation in the Marshall Plan. Last week, in Conference Room 1105A of the State Department, a Rumanian delegation was finally able to accept, if not the 17-year-old offer, at least a latterday, more commercial version.

Urbane and businesslike, Deputy Premier Gheorghe Gaston-Marin negotiated with Under Secretary of State

Averell Harriman for massive credits* to buy modern petrochemical plants, which would expand the industrial complex already in operation near Ploesti. The Rumanians also urged increased contacts with the U.S. in academic, diplomatic, technical and cultural fields.

To improve the climate of the talks, the Bucharest regime reportedly released a few of the estimated 10,000 political prisoners still in Rumanian jails and leaked stories of anti-Russian demonstrations in Rumania. The Rumanians, who have long challenged Moscow's economic domination of the Eastern bloc, made it quite clear last week that they felt they could get away with all this because Moscow is currently too preoccupied with Red China to give them much trouble.

The Russians seemed indeed preoccupied. In addition to Nikita Khrushchev, wooing Arabs in Egypt, Mikhail Suslov journeyed to Paris to persuade the French that Russians are better friends than their new-found Chinese pals, while peripatetic Supersalesman Anastas Mikoyan scurried about Japan, inspecting plants and talking glibly of buying Japanese ships, pulp mills and industrial plants for the production of fertilizer and plastics on long-term credits.

Many Japanese were interested, but paradoxically, not the 100,000-member Communist Party, whose pro-Peking leaders prefer to talk trade with the Chinese. To make their position clear, Japan's 57-man Central Committee last week voted overwhelmingly to expel two leading party members for taking Russia's side in the schism.

* Last year, Washington extended $46 million in aid and credits to the Poles to help finance their $151 million trade with the U.S. No aid or credits went to the other satellites, whose trade with the U.S. is minuscule: Czechoslovakia $20 million, Hungary $18 million, East Germany $9.6 million, Rumania $2.4 million, Bulgaria $1.2 million.

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