THE NATIONS: New Europe

At Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam, the Big Three, in Olympian isolation, molded a politically inert Europe. But there was life in the kneaded clay; last week post war Europe’s face began to emerge. The destiny of Europe still depended mainly on relations between the U.S. and Russia, but Europe was acquiring recognizable lineaments of its own.

The Focus. The Council of Foreign Ministers’ opening session (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) marked the return of Europe’s political life. London embassies carried a heavy traffic of emissaries: the Greek Regent, Archbishop Damaskinos; French Socialism’s aging Leon Blum; the Czech Premier, soft-spoken Zdenek Fierlinger; Britain’s ambassadors and ministers to Near and Middle East countries.

The Potsdam conference made the peace treaty with Italy the first business of the Council of Five (the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China). Count Nicolo Carandini arrived in London after his final briefing in Rome to present Italy’s case. His country was in neither a position nor a mood for hard bargaining. It planned to make concessions from the very first, in the hope of trading territory for Allied good will and economic help. A slight “rectification” of the French-Italian border would be acceptable. Italians would not argue long or loud to keep the South Tirol. Greece could have the Dodecanese Islands. Italy was resigned to losing Libya, including Cyrenaica — provided Yugoslavia did not become a colonial power at Italy’s expense.

The Italians in London would negotiate as hard as they could to keep Eritrea and Somaliland, might be content there as elsewhere to see joint trusteeships which would maintain an “open door to Africa.” Of Trees & Brooks. The Trieste issue had descended to a technical problem much too minute to be handled at the Truman-Stalin-Attlee level. The city would almost certainly be internationalized, but its ultimate fate would depend on where lines were drawn in its hinterland. Racial and historical factors moved strings back & forth over detailed maps of Venetia Julia province. The watercourses were most important, because the nation that controlled them would be able to shut off Trieste’s water supply.

Prince Otto Weriand Hugo Ernst Windisch-Graetz, one of the biggest land holders in the area, turned up in Rome with a solution to this problem: a new sovereign state with himself as ruler. At the very least, he insisted, Yugoslavs must not be permitted to deforest any area ceded to them, lest the springs dry up.

The U.S. and Britain wanted to conclude a treaty with Italy rapidly. Russia had a different attitude, which some de scribed as “vengeful.” Kremlin policy is rarely dictated by emotion; it was more likely that the Soviet unwillingness to come to terms on an Italian treaty was intended to force the Council to agree on peace treaties for Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary.

The Pattern. Since last month’s stiffening of the U.S. attitude on eastern Europe, Russia had climbed down a little way. It realized at last that the Western powers held a potent threat: they could refuse to sign peace treaties with puppet governments in Eastern Europe. For a fortnight the Russian press raged against Anglo-American interference with internal affairs of sovereign Balkan nations. London denied the charge of Balkan intrigue. Once the U.S. and Britain had taken a firm stand, direct intervention was not necessary to encourage democratic elements in eastern Europe which looked to the West for both economic aid and political sympathy.

Along Russia’s borders from Poland to Bulgaria (see FOREIGN NEWS), the U.S. position evoked response. Even Czechoslovakia’s Russophile Fierlinger discussed earnestly with Ernest Bevin concrete plans to divert some of his country’s almost exclusively Russian trade down the Elbe toward Britain.

If Russian domination of eastern Europe had relaxed a bit, there was even less possibility of complete U.S. dominance of western Europe. There socialist governments ruled the northwest periphery and strong and growing Socialist parties stretched into France, Italy, Germany. Whatever else this socialist revival might be, it was no more a creature of Washington than of Moscow.

So Europe had not split sharply and irreparably between a U.S.-dommated west and a Russian-dominated east. ‘There were zones-of influence, but Big Power politics, as well as Europe’s own growing independence of the Big Powers, cut across zone lines.

” Not Armageddon. The Catholic Church last week seemed further than ever from accepting leadership in a political campaign against either Socialists or Communists. When Kazimierz Papee, Ambassador from the London Polish Government, appeared with Polish soldiers at the Vatican, the Pope addressed him by his name, but not his title. Osservatore Romano failed to mention him in its report of the audience, indicating Papal recognition of the fact that the London Polish Government had been replaced by one made in Moscow. Vatican officials said that “though the Holy See was filled with benevolence toward Polish troops . . . and wished for a completely independent and democratic Poland, the Catholic Church was bound to acknowledge the existence of 30,000,000 Polish Catholics depending on the Warsaw Government.”

A Vatican envoy took up his Prague post last week. If his report from that Russian-influenced capital is satisfactory, Vatican recognition of the Warsaw Government was expected to follow.

On some other political issues, Vatican policy approached the Socialist program: it stressed punishment of war criminals* rather than of nations; it veered away from support of the Italian monarchy.

The Council of Foreign Ministers would find Europe’s basic conflicts as real as ever; but edges were less sharp than some observers had imagined.

There was no logical compromise between democratic socialists and authoritarian communists, but there were millions in western Europe who voted Socialist and yet admired both the anti-socialist U.S. and the differently anti-socialist U.S.S.R. In eastern Europe were millions who accepted governments friendly to Russia, yet welcomed a show of U.S. strength to break a Russian strangle hold. Contradictory doctrines lived side by side in the same countries, the same towns and even in the same individuals. (In Slovakia some Catholic priests were writing articles for Moscow’s Pravda.)

Europe was not coalescing into a single entity; but it was building bridges across the chasms.

-*Vatican circles privately listed Alfred Rosenberg (for his contributions to Nazi racist philosophy) as the top war criminal. Others: Goring (because he could have stopped Hitler in 1939 and because he bombed Rotterdam, Belgrade. Coventry, and, especially, Canterbury); Ley (because of “inhuman treatment of foreign labor”).