THE NATIONS: Umbrellas & Broken Glass

In London last week the big cream-&-gold salon of Lancaster House had been tidied up. The ornate wall mirrors, the candelabra and the red leather chairs were dusted and in place. The Big Four Foreign Ministers were ready for another try at writing the German and Austrian peace treaties.

Weather Change. Since the long, deadlocked afternoons at Moscow’s Aero Club last spring, the U.S. had assumed the initiative. The Marshall Plan was one expression of it. Its mere promise was already altering political weather forecasts for Western Europe. For their part, the Russians and their friends, like the Comrades who gathered for a somewhat dampening rally in Milan last week (see cut), were putting up umbrellas.

In Eastern Europe the umbrella took the form of a program to liquidate non-Communist leaders in satellite states (see FOREIGN NEWS). In U.N. it took the form of an intensified defense of the Kremlin’s veto. In propaganda it included threats like Molotov’s (see below).

“We Will Pass . . .” If there was no essential agreement on Germany at Lancaster House, the Russians and everyone else knew what would follow. The U.S., British and French zones would draw closer together in an economic union. There might be no “separate peace” in the formal sense; occupation troops would remain. Western Germans would, however, get more chance to run their own affairs and to contribute to Europe’s reconstruction.

Last week the deputies of the Big Four got down to preliminary work at Lancaster House. They were a professional crew: the U.S.’s political expert on Germany, Ambassador Robert D. Murphy; Patrick Dean of the British Foreign Office; Andrei A. Smirnov of Russia’s Foreign Ministry; and France’s career diplomat Jacques Tarbe de St. Hardouin. Their job was not to negotiate, merely to set’ up the issues which Marshall, Bevin, Bidault and Molotov would consider.

By the end of last week they had not agreed on a single point. Possibly the deputies were jinxed. On opening day, when they were just settling into their seats, a photographer’s heavy tripod had fallen, smashing one of the ornate salon mirrors. The deputies looked up but did not comment. Not long after, Chairman Patrick Dean’s tongue slipped. He said: “We will pass to the next disagreement.”