THE NATIONS: Words & Pistols

The world could not get used to Russia’s new idea of Russia. Shock and deepest pessimism resulted whenever the Russians (sometimes with skill but never with tact) revealed their conception of Russia’s place in the postwar world.

Last week the U.S.S.R. was throwing its weight about as never before. It persisted in treating eastern Europe as a special Russian preserve and at the same time extended its claims far south into the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Only in two areas—Germany and the Far East—were relations between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers undisturbed. Significantly, these were the areas of paramount importance, where neither the Western powers nor Russia could afford to endanger the peace.

Discord and gloom at the first session of the Foreign Ministers Council in London made it more than ever apparent that the fabric of peace would be many a weary month in the weaving (see below). There and elsewhere, disputes ranged from the Danube to the Indian Ocean, from the meaning of “democracy” to the meaning of “and.”

The U.S. was looking impatiently at the clock. The Russians had reasons—none of them encouraging—for postponing settlements. The rest of the world did its cause no good by continually assuming that the Russians were all-powerful. The Russians knew themselves to be overbalanced by the U.S.-British combine, but they also knew that there were two melting assets on the U.S.-British side of the scale: 1) London and Washington were under heavy popular pressure to demobilize their armies and 2) whatever the U.S. Government chose to do about it, the secret of the atomic bomb could not be kept indefinitely.

Ed Stettinius, chief U.S. delegate to the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Organization, was only half successful in his efforts to speed up U.N.O.’s timetable in London. At the rate the Council of Foreign Ministers was drafting treaties, U.N.O. would be organized in time to enforce them. The question was whether, when that time came, the nations would really trust U.N.O. to do the job.

Though Moscow’s Pravda insisted angrily that no issues between the great powers were insoluble, distrust and tension grew. Molotov snapped to the Council of Foreign Ministers: “You would think I was accused and on trial.”

A bedroom story measured Molotov’s own suspicions. When Foreign Commissar Molotov visited Clement Attlee at the Prime Minister’s quiet summer home, Chequers, the Russian brought a Russian chambermaid. In stiff disapproval the regular Chequers maid looked on while the Russian woman made Molotov’s bed. The eyes of the English maid nearly popped when the pillow was lifted. There lay a long, fat pistol.