THE NATIONS: Piecemeal Peace

“Peace,” the world had heard, “is indivisible.” Yet as the nations gathered this week at Paris for the first genera-conference to settle World War II, their agenda were made of chips and driblets and minor fractions of what might or might not be peace.

The easiest way to start solving a jigsaw puzzle is to take the straight-edged pieces that obviously belong on the outside. But even when these are in place all the puzzler may have is a few clouds hanging in a sky. He won’t know whether he is working on a picture of a country wedding or a shipwreck.

Fourteen months after Germany’s collapse the nations are still fiddling with the relatively easy issues on the periphery. In the center of the puzzle is a great hole which this Paris conference is not supposed to touch. The hole might be expressed as: what to do about Europe? Molotov hinted at the Russian answer last fortnight—an eventual Russo-German alliance which would dominate Europe. The West’s reaction was a stiffening attitude and a move to unite the western zones of Germany under democratic auspices.

The victors know that an Italian or Balkan settlement makes little sense until they decide whether there will be one Germany or two (and, consequently, one Europe or two, one world or two). So far, an integrated approach to the peace is blocked by Russia’s policy of prolonging the unsettled conditions in which Communism might flourish. The only course open to the U.S. and Britain was to insist that the 17 smaller nations be called to Paris where, beginning July 29, they will work on the edges of the puzzle—Finland, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary. “It is a fallacy,” said Australia’s Dr. Herbert V. Evatt last week, “to suppose that all knowledge and all wisdom reside at the center of military power.”

Military power certainly still spoke with a mighty voice in the Big Four’s draft treaties. In the four satellites east of the Stettin-Trieste line (Finland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary) where the Red Army held control, Russia got pretty much what it wanted. In Italy, occupied by the U.S. and Britain, Russia had yielded to the Western powers on most points.

Reparations. Russia had flatly claimed $300,000,000 from each of the satellites regardless of its ability to pay, while the U.S. insisted that reparations should not be permitted to wreck a defeated nation’s economy. From Finland, Rumania and Hungary the Big Four allotted Russia $800,000,000. In Italy, at U.S. and British insistence, the Russian demand was cut to $100,000,000, to come partly out of current production for seven years beginning in 1948.

Armaments. The Big Four readily agreed that the ex-satellites of Germany should have small armies and be deprived of all potentially aggressive arms. Italy is to have its fleet cut from a prewar tonnage of 480,000 (including four battleships) to 67,500 tons plus two battleships. Each nation is allowed a handful of military planes, no bombers.

Boundaries. Again the man in possession called the tune. From Finland, Russia is to get the warm water port of Petsamo and a lease on the Baltic naval base at Porkala; from Rumania, 79,300 square miles of Bessarabia. Other shifts in the Balkans give Transylvania back to Rumania, southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. The British and French gain at the expense of Italy: the Dodecanese Islands go to British-controlled Greece; the communes of Briga and Tenda and other bits of the Italian Alps go to France. But Italy is allowed to keep the South Tyrol over Austrian protest. Trieste, instead of going to either Yugoslavia or Italy, is to be internationalized under the control of the U.N.

Occupation. Allied troops (the Red Army in Finland and the Balkan countries, U.S. and British troops in Italy) will withdraw from the ex-enemy nations within 90 days after the treaties come into force. But Russia put a joker into the Hungary and Rumania treaties; it can keep “such armed forces as it may need for maintenance of lines of communication of the Red Army with the Soviet zone of occupation in Austria.” (Meanwhile, the Russians refuse even to consider peace with Austria.) Although the easiest access to Austria for the U.S. and Britain is through the Adriatic, the Western powers did not reserve the right to keep “lines of communication” troops in Italy. They will supply their Austrian occupation forces by long, cumbersome routes through Germany.

The future of Danubian peoples depended less on whether they lived under the Rumanian or Hungarian or other national flag than whether they were allowed to trade with the whole world—and not merely with Russia. The U.S. had offered a clause for all the Balkan treaties: “Navigation of the Danube . . . shall be free and open on terms of entire equality to nationals, vessels of commerce and goods of all states.” Russia has not accepted the clause. The free Danube thus becomes the most significant issue presented to the Paris conference.

Not that a majority of the 21 could decide this or any other treaty issue. A two-thirds vote of the conference could send a treaty to the Big Four, any one of which could refuse to sign. If Russia, for instance, balked on the free Danube clause, her troops in possession of the river’s banks could make the clause meaningless.

With the hopeful courage that has marked his leadership in U.S. foreign policy, Senator Vandenberg called the Paris conference “a long step down the thorny path of peace.” It remained to be seen.