Les Miserables

The discomfort of two nations last week made news.

Who's Winning Now? In spite of another mistaken U.S. bombing of a Swiss town, the Swiss signed a new trade agreement with a U.S.-British mission headed by Washington's wispy Lauchlin Currie and London's Dingle Foot. The Swiss, who three years ago were squeezed by the top-dog Nazis, now had to bend their neutrality to a squeeze from the opposite side: they agreed 1) to cut off all except token shipments of important civilian goods between Germany and northern Italy; 2) to switch all the electric current they export from Germany to France; 3) to impound all German-owned bank balances and help the Allies track down all German-owned securities, etc. which have gone into hiding in Switzerland. This last, particularly, was important to Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Argentina, who also read the war news.

Taking Vocal. The French Foreign Office, which thought that, having made a pact with Russia, it could take a high hand with Britain and the U.S., realized that it had made a mistake. Yalta had made it clear that France rated no higher in Moscow than in London and Washington. Then France demanded changes in Dumbarton Oaks and, to her surprise, it was Stalin rather than Roosevelt or Churchill who firmly refused to make revisions before San Francisco--whither, as a result, France will now go as a guest, not as a sponsor. Just to make matters pikestaff-plain. Soviet Ambassador Alexander E. Bogomolov elucidated Russian realism v. French realism for Diplomat Maurice Dejean of the Quai d'Orsay: "France should not try to sing above her range."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.