THE NATIONS: The Year of the Bullbat

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Convalescence is a nervous time, exuberant, but shot through with real and fancied dangers; a frustrating time, irrational, irascible and full of hope. The world of 1946 was convalescent.

The U.S. Army sent a radar impulse to the moon, heard it bounce back. This was the farthest stretch of human communication. It said nothing whatever.

¶ The U.S. was still (in uneasy probability) the only nation armed with the atomic bomb; the U.S. Army & Navy, before demonstrating it at Bikini, ordered a survey of caves for use in the day when its bombs might not be complete protection against another’s.

¶ In India 400 millions, in Burma 17 millions, in Indonesia 72 millions made notable strides toward national independence, without showing much evidence of progress in self-government.

¶ If The French and Italian black markets had plenty in the midst of want. Britain had want in the midst of socialism (which most Britons, nevertheless, were still determined to keep). Russia had pushed out her borders and was, for the first time in history, the strongest nation in Europe; no organized internal political opposition to the Government existed. Yet, so great was their feeling of insecurity that some of Russia’s masters spent their time chivvying poets, composers and clowns whose art was deemed subtly out of step with the regime.

¶ U.S college population bulged to 2,000,000 (double that of 1936) without assuring any comparable multiplication of national wisdom. Patients in U.S. mental hospitals also reached 600,000 as against 516,000 ten years ago. In the U.S. divorces were one-third as frequent as marriages; in Egypt, nearly half.

¶ Strikes gnawed bigger bites than ever before in the U.S. economy without increasing the power of the unions or the living standards of the workers. Most dramatic was the rail strike in May, which collapsed when Harry Truman threw the full weight of his presidential office at two men-whom few had heard of before and fewer have heard of since.

Woman of the Year. Though 1946 was unquiet with the drums of war behind and the danger of war ahead, a deeply happy thread ran through its garish pattern; it was a year of homecoming and, therefore, a woman’s year. To loyalties older than flags jealous governments had released some 60 million men. (The Americans chafed noisily at demobilization delays, and returned horrified by the scarcity of water closets and breakfast foods beyond the oceans; the Russians returned discontented at the remembrance of fine houses, fabulous watches, and women with soft hands across the Oder, the Danube and the Bug.)

The women of 1946 (most of them) had their men back, a joy tempered by fears of wars to come. The nations were quarreling again; the year’s news was dominated by the opposed efforts of Russia’s Molotov and America’s Byrnes to reap or hold advantage at the peace tables. The women, who wanted peace in their time and their sons’ time, anxiously watched as the conflict over lands and lives and faiths took an intricate, peculiarly masculine shape in treaty clauses, commas and semicolons.

Besides the firm assurance of lasting peace, 1946’s woman had other quests. In the U.S. she scrabbled for dwelling space, for bread (in the spring) for meat (in the fall) and for sugar (at year’s end). In China’s Hunan Province she sought any food at all (including a whitish clay called, pathetically, “Goddess of Mercy”), but she did not find enough, and thousands starved while relief distribution was immobilized by red tape. In Germany she sought cigarets; in Russia, shoes; in Britain, sheets. She learned (what she had long suspected) that privation marched with the victorious armies as well as with the vanquished. Her frustration was sharply symbolized by one elderly woman of Worcester, Mass., who stood on a street corner futilely waving while bus after crowded bus passed her by. Finally, she stepped in front of one, stamped her foot and for 20 minutes she and the driver fought a duel of wills as obdurate as two peacemaking statesmen. This unidentified Worcesterite, impatient at the complexities that lay between her and simple goals, was the Woman of the Year.

The Gods Depart. The Man of the Year would not be found among the very great. The super-criminals and benevolent dreamers, the movers and shakers of the 1930s and of the war years had died or stepped back toward the shadows. Stalin still had more power than any man alive, but he wielded it increasingly through others, conserved his strength and (reportedly) worked on his memoirs like any good, grey 19th Century British empire-builder. Churchill was still the world’s greatest orator,* but a statesman’s words, unlike a poet’s, need power to give them weight; Churchill, testy and grim, was not in power. Bull-necked Ernest Bevin had rushed into 1946 snorting to U.N. and to the world a great commoner’s bold concept of democracy. But Bevin was sick, and he, too, as the year went on, was content to see the bold words fly where the real power was. Bernard M. Baruch’s long, thin hands held the world’s No. 1 problem; at year’s end it advanced from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Security Council, where the big fight would come.

In Japan MacArthur, ruling through an ex-god, was trying one of the boldest experiments in human history; but 1946 gave little hint of how his attempt to remake a whole people would come out. Throughout 1946 Pope Pius XII had been a symbol of Western civilization’s resistance to the rule of materialism; but the Communists, unlike the mountains, would not be moved by faith; the struggle that engaged the Pope was fought currently in the field of politics. For a time it looked as if France’s Georges Bidault, as leader of Europe’s only strong new political movement, Christian socialism, might be 1946’s man; but as the year ended and the Fourth French Republic began, Bidault was out of office (and apartment hunting). In China Chiang Kai-shek gained ground on two fronts: he beat the Communists in the field and sponsored a constitutional assembly which worked through democratic process to China’s first constitution (see FOREIGN NEWS). Chiang, however, still had far to go toward unifying and rehabilitating his country.

Gargoyles & Gladiators. With the coal strike, John L. Lewis, the Great Gargoyle, bid vigorously for Villain of the Year, but Lewis came in second. Theodore Bilbo had been exposed to national view for 20 years, but not until 1946 did the U.S. really savor the fulsome putrescence of Bilbo’s bigotry.

Theater’s and Cinema’s Man of the Year was Laurence Olivier, whose Oedipus and Hotspur reminded Broadway of the difference between adequacy and excellence, and whose Henry V could not have reminded Hollywood of anything it had ever seen before. Sportsmen of the year came in pairs: Jack Kramer and Ted Schroeder re-won the Davis Cup for the U.S. in the year’s last week, and Army’s Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis made their last appearance in the game against Navy that was almost lost in two of the most exciting minutes of football history. (President Truman had left the stadium and missed those final two minutes; he missed so many other plays in 1946 that his Gallup poll popularity score fell from 87% to 32%.)

Tinker’s Dam. Had 1946 ended as it began, Molotov would have been the year’s man. He rode the postwar Russian flood, whipping it with a hard wind of propaganda. It welled up to the Persian plateau 22 miles from Teheran; it seeped deeply into China, licked at Tripolitania, reached for the Dardanelles, almost engulfed Trieste, soaked Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, threatened Germany, Austria, and even (through Russia’s Communist Parties) Italy and France.

At first the West, especially the U.S., was thrown off balance by this assault. The West had forgotten what happens to wartime coalitions when victory removes the pressure that holds them together; it had forgotten (though Russia never ceased reminding it) how great was the economic, political and moral gulf between the two systems.

Before the year was out, however, the Russian flood was contained. On the dam that held it many men had labored— Bevin and Bidault, General Lucius Clay in Germany, Mark Clark in Austria, The Netherlands’ Eelco van Kleffens and Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak in U.N., Mac-Arthur in Japan, Chiang Kai-shek in China, and, eminently, Senator Arthur Vandenberg in the U.S. But the dam’s chief builder was James F. Byrnes of Spartanburg, S.C., who became the firm and patient voice of the U.S. in the councils of the world.

Byrnes at 67 had accomplished the big job of 1946, and in so doing he had grown in stature more than any other public figure of the year. As the year began many regarded him as a mere fixer. Yet by patient, purposeful tinkering with the details of the satellite treaties, he managed to get over to the Russians and the world that the U.S. had planted the weight of its power in the path of the Russian advance. What Jimmy said about Trieste and freedom of the Danube had its effect on bigger issues, such as the Russian bid for control of Germany and the Dardanelles. Tinker Jimmy’s dam was a jerry-built improvisation—but, for the moment, it held. The U.S. and the world looking back on 1946 might well and gratefully remember Jimmy Byrnes when many a bigger man had been forgotten.

How had he done it? How was it that the name of this small-town lawyer and congressional cloakroom compromiser was known with respect from the rag markets of Istanbul to the chrysanthemum parterres of Osaka?

The Cool of the Evening. In South Carolina, when the sun sets and the day’s work is done (but the strain of the day still lingers in mind and muscle), when the restless dust starts to settle back on the cotton fields, men gather on verandahs and wharves to sit and talk while they watch the bullbats nervously darting and swooping around the chimneys. Bourbon with water from the branch is in order—and low-voiced, scattered talk of high politics. Such a talk Jimmy Byrnes calls a “bullbat session.” He loves them. In 1946 the bullbat session—bourbon, branch water and all—became (like the green baize and champagne of another day) an international diplomatic institution.

At first Byrnes set too much store by the bullbat session. In Moscow last December he had a long, informal chat with Joe Stalin. Joe seemed to like Jimmy, and when Jimmy left he thought he and Joe saw eye-to-eye on two points Jimmy had made: 1) the Russians should go easy on Persia, and 2) a 25-year treaty guaranteeing the disarmament of Germany would be a good thing.

When Jimmy got back to Washington, he found, in less amiable sessions, a prevailing impression that the Russians had out-bargained him on the atomic-control agreement. Before Byrnes left for the January U.N. meeting in London, President Truman reminded him that Vanden-berg’s support was necessary to make Byrnes’s policy stick with the Senate and the country. At the London meeting Bevin still carried the ball for the West and Vandenberg was still dissatisfied with Byrnes. In his report to the Senate on the U.N. meeting, Vandenberg lavished praise on Bevin, Bidault and others, pointedly omitted any reference to Byrnes. Vandenberg then called on the U.S. vigorously to “sustain its own purposes and ideals on all occasions as Russia does.” Jimmy got the point; at the same time Moscow’s refusal to take its troops out of Persia was beginning to convince Byrnes that dealing with Stalin was not much different from dealing with Molotov.

If Byrnes had continued to stand for patience with Russia while Vandenberg stood for firmness, U.S. policy might have been paralyzed by division. Instead the Senator from Michigan and the ex-Senator from South Carolina (who understood each other well, although there was no great affection between them) began to move in converging lines. In April the Russians scornfully turned their backs on Byrnes’s offer of a 25-year German disarmament treaty. That completed Byrnes’s education; the bipartisan policy of patience and firmness became the most important new factor in world politics. Bevin was glad to slide gradually into a back seat and let Byrnes, who represented the real power in the Anglo-U.S. combination, do the talking for the West.

History Goes “Quack, Quack.” Through the summer, in bullbat sessions and public meetings at the 21-nation Conference in Paris, Byrnes talked well and vigorously. On one occasion he cried: “I will sit here no more arguing whether the word should be ‘and’ or ‘but’ . . . haggling over commas and semicolons. . . .” A New Zealand delegate, W. J. Jordan, was similarly annoyed. He snapped: “I’m sick of listening to ‘quack, quack, quack’ hour after hour.”

The Paris Conference proved that open covenants could not be openly arrived at this side of eternity, because delegates spoke for home consumption and would not make concessions in the open. It also demonstrated some more important points: 1) that the West could find propaganda answers to Russian propaganda; 2) that Byrnes had been right in his insistence that the small nations be heard, and 3) that Byrnes could be just as stubborn as Molotov. The Paris Conference was boring, but it marked the turning of the Russian tide. That “quack, quack” turned out to be the voice of history.

The U.S. public did not sense the meaning of Byrnes’s tireless efforts until one August week when five U.S. Army flyers lay dead in a tiny village in the Julian Alps, victims of Marshal Tito’s outdated confidence that the U.S. would look the other way. Communist Tito had been a great war hero to the U.S.; overnight he became the focus of U.S. wrath. Byrnes, sitting in a buzzing Conference session at Paris, spent two hours writing Tito a note that told him where he stood with a nation that had learned at last that the price of peace could be too high.

Recessional. Two weeks later Byrnes made his great Stuttgart speech in which he recognized, as the Potsdam Pact had not, that a healthy Germany was necessary for a reconstructed Europe. To insure that a strong Germany would not again dominate the Continent, Byrnes made a solemn promise:

“We thought [after the first World War] we could stay out of Europe’s wars and we lost interest in the affairs of Europe. That did not keep us from being forced into a second World War. We will not again make that mistake. We intend to continue our interest in the affairs of Europe and of the world. . . .”

Europe believed Byrnes. The great Russian recessional began. As the year waned the Russian-stooge government in Azerbaijan collapsed. Communist-sponsored candidates lost the Berlin elections. Moscow reduced its German garrisons. Pressure on Turkey eased. Europe began to breathe more easily.

At the New York sessions of U.N. and the Foreign Ministers the going got sticky again. Byrnes asked Molotov, who likes a little bullbatting himself, up to his room in the Waldorf-Astoria. Informally, the two began to make progress. When the formal sessions ended, Byrnes had a deal on Trieste, Molotov had agreed to discuss treaties with Germany and Austria, and the U.S. resolution on disarmament had passed the U.N. Assembly.

The Art of the Possible. Byrnes’s two chief helpers are Charles E. (“Chip”) Bohlen, a handsome, alert careerist who acts as his Russian adviser-translator, and Benjamin V. (“Ben”) Cohen, once mu:h the better half of F.D.R.’s (Thomas G.) Corcoran & Cohen team. Cohen, an idealist, is classified in what Washington calls the N.C.L.—non-Communist left. Byrnes likes to recall that he was an idealist once, himself. “In 1918 I was a follower of Woodrow Wilson. I gloried in his idealism and in the magnificent effort he made to build the peace upon the Covenant of the League of Nations.” But a lot of branch water has gone into the bourbon since then. Jimmy may still have Wilsonian visions; certainly, he can still recognize and use the traditional U.S. political principles. But Jimmy, an intensely practical man, is leading no crusades. He subscribes to the doctrine that “politics is the art of the possible.” He tries to keep from getting behind or ahead of the parade.

Byrnes has read little; he lacks the born statesman’s personal dignity. The other night at U.N. he pushed and elbowed through the hat-check crowd for 15 minutes, while Bevin and Molotov went out special exits after having their coats brought to them.

Impatient & Infirm. In short, Byrnes is a practical politician with the limitations and assets of that breed. Among the limitations is the habit of not making decisions until they are forced upon him. While Byrnes has been saddled with negotiations on Europe, no U.S. policy ha’s been made in wide areas of the world. The U.S. Palestine policy as enunciated by Truman was mere mischievous vote-catching, as unrealistic in its extreme pro-Zionism as the Grand Mufti’s antiSemitism. No one is really making policy on Latin America. On China, a key piece in the U.S. policy structure, John Carter Vincent, director of the State Department’s Far Eastern Division, last fortnight rushed in to fill the vacuum left by Byrnes’s absence; Vincent drafted for Truman a statement which was, to say the least, impatient toward Chiang Kai-shek and infirm in opposing the Reds.

On the long overdue reorganization of the State Department into an agency capable of handling the war-multiplied U.S. responsibility in world affairs—and capable of planning ahead like Whitehall or the Kremlin—Byrnes has scarcely turned a wheel. (In the 546 days he has headed State, he has spent 305 in Washington.) In 1939, when the war began, State operated on $16 million a year—2% of the Department of Agriculture’s budget. For 1947 State had $128 million—a lot more money—but little more efficiency.

On the asset side of having a politician as Secretary of State in a time of crisis was Byrnes’s handling of Henry Wallace’s stab-in-the-back. One French diplomat who has watched Byrnes for a year made a point: “Never in our hearing did he utter a word of criticism of either his President or of Wallace. That showed me he was a loyal man—but also, which is perhaps better—that he was a damn smart politician. Politician is a word which has got a bad connotation in many parts of the world. But there is so much ignorance, misunderstanding and even stupidity in the way international affairs are handled that I sometimes think what the world needs is more smart politicians—especially if they are loyal men too.”

Bigger & Better. On the whole, Jimmy had done well; he had found that the way to get along with the Russians in international conferences was to state U.S. principles and policies clearly, and to stick to them; the Russians respected that. But the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia was not confined to the council table. It existed more importantly in the real world of men & women for whose allegiance the two social systems bid against one another.

In the long run, for example, it would not be enough to stop Russian political penetration in Persia; the full exercise of U.S. leadership would require that the U.S. help the Persian Government toward economic progress and political democracy for the Persian people. Otherwise, many of them would be attracted toward Communism, as they were last year. This problem existed throughout the Middle East, over much of Europe, the whole Far East and parts of Latin America. On its solution depended not only the U.S. world position, but also the lasting peace which the world sought so feverishly in 1946. That job was one for future years; if Tinker Jimmy’s dam held long enough, the U.S. would seek in better years bigger men than Jimmy for a bigger task.

* Goats of the Year were Alexander Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and Alvanley Johnston of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. * Sample quote of 1946: “The American eagle sits on his perch, a large strong bird with formidable beak and claws. There he sits, motionless, and Mr. Gromyko is sent every day to prod him with a sharp sickle, now on his beak, now under his wing, now in his tail feathers. All the time the eagle keeps quite still. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that nothing is going on inside the breast of the eagle. I venture to give this friendly hint to my old wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin.”