FOREIGN RELATIONS: Hard Words

The U.S. State Department, more decisively than at any time since V-E day, showed its realization that the U.S. must show a strong hand or lose its leadership in the postwar world.

In notes sent last week to Soviet Russia and two of its European satellites it warned that it was tired of Communist monkey business with the peace of Europe and that its patience would stand for just so much. Within three days the U.S.:

¶ Sent an ultimatum to Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia demanding redress and satisfaction over the capture and killing of U.S. airmen.

¶ Bluntly told the Communist-dominated Polish Government that it was not living up to its agreement to hold free and fair elections.

¶ Summarily rejected Russia’s bid to fortify the Dardanelles (and thus bring Turkey within its orbit of slave states).

“Outrageous Acts.” The Yugoslav incident was not the most important, but it was the most inflammatory.

When news of the second attack on a U.S. plane (see INTERNATIONAL) reached Washington, the State Department promptly released the text of a note sent to Yugoslavia last May 20. It accused the Yugoslav Government of a series of nefarious and unfair tactics in Trieste: subornation of the press, incitement to unrest, propaganda attacks on the A.M.G., criminal and terrorist activities, intimidation of the local public and local officials. Said the note, in effect: all this must stop.

Then the State Department got busy on the newer developments. President Truman was cruising aboard the Williamsburg in southern waters; Secretary of State Byrnes was absent at the Paris treaty conference. Acting Secretary Dean Acheson got on the phone to Byrnes; Byrnes and Truman talked with each other over a transatlantic circuit. Lights burned late in the Hotel Meurice, Paris headquarters of the U.S. delegation. Through a conference session in the Luxembourg Palace, Jimmy Byrnes ignored the speakers, sat scribbling shorthand notes.

After Jimmy Byrnes’s shorthand had been transcribed, Acheson called in the Yugoslav Charge d’Affaires and handed him a blistering U.S. note: “These outrageous acts have been perpetrated by a Government that professes to be a friendly nation. . . . The use of force . . . was without the slightest justification in international law.”

The Forty-eight Hours. The note ridiculed the Yugoslav contention that the shootings were “accidental.” It demanded the immediate release and safe conduct to the border of all U.S. plane occupants still alive and permission for them to be interviewed by a U.S. representative. The ultimatum gave Yugoslavia 48 hours from the time of its receipt to comply with the U.S. demands.

If the demands were met within the time limit, the U.S. would “determine its course in the light of the evidence then secured and the efforts of the Yugoslav Government to right the wrong done.” If not—and this was a letdown—the U.S. would “call upon the Security Council of the United Nations to meet promptly and to take appropriate action.”

The threat carried more moral force than military might. A Soviet veto could prevent punitive action by U.N. But the tone of the U.S. protest was proof of U.S. determination to take a stand in eastern Europe. If U.N. faltered, the U.S. would need to provide its own sanctions. Short of force the U.S., which shipped Yugoslavia $32,000,000 in wartime Lend-Lease, could hold up its share of the $100,000,000 in UNRRA supplies still undelivered to the Yugoslavs.

Although Marshal Tito cried that he wanted peace “but not at any price,” he soon complied with the U.S. terms. The prisoners from the first plane were released (they said they had received good treatment); the bodies of the four known dead from the second plane were disinterred from the hasty grave in which they had been buried and escorted to Belgrade with highest military honors.

The tension eased.

The New Frontier. But it would take a long time, if ever, before the war of’ nerves over the Dardenelles (see INTERNATIONAL) was ended. The Dardenelles issue did not get the headlines nor excite the U.S. public as much as the Yugoslav crisis. But Washington considered it far more crucial.

At Potsdam the Big Three had agreed to some revision of the Montreux Convention which confirmed Turkey as sole guardian of the Dardanelles. But the Russian proposal to share directly in controlling the Straits would reduce Turkey, now allied to Britain and closely attached to U.S. diplomacy, to a satellite of the Soviet Union.

U.S. policy had been firmly hinged to the principle that Europe’s vital waterways should be internationalized. That policy had failed to persuade Russia to open up the Danube under international control. The policy would probably fail again if the Dardanelles fell under Soviet guns.

In its note to Moscow the State Department bluntly warned that “should the Straits become the object of attack or threat of attack by an aggressor, the resulting situation . . . would clearly be a matter for action on the part of the Security Council of the United Nations.”

This threat was made of sterner stuff than the more spectacular ultimatum to the Yugoslavs. The U.S. frontier had once been established on the Rhine. Now it had been moved eastward as far as the Black Sea.