Minuet in Potsdam

War's thunder trailed off into a tinkling minuet. The dust of Sidi Barrani, Stalingrad and Aachen had dissolved; and there, as in a dream, were the clipped green lawns of Sanssouci. There was a second palace, a big and ugly one, and a pretty little lake. And there were the Big Three, enjoying a summer evening of music.

The Spirit & the Flute. In Potsdam's rococo rooms the great Emperor Frederick had played his flute (not badly); in its disciplined gardens he had schemed to confuse and divide his enemies. Since then, Potsdam had symbolized much that was Germany. When old Paul von Hindenburg stood in Potsdam's Garrison Church on March 21, 1933, and handed his country over to the Nazis, he bade them rule in the spirit of Potsdam. Now the Garrison Church was ein Truemmerhaufen -- a rubble heap.

Still standing near the Emperor's park were the condescendingly quaint log houses of the Russian Colony which Frederick William III had built for his Russian musicians. Now Red Army troops were quartered in the houses. Near by was the road where 30-year-old John Quincy Adams, traveling to take up his post as first U.S.

Minister to Prussia, was challenged by a Prussian officer of the guard. When Adams identified himself, the officer wanted to know what & where the United States might be.

Now a humbly born President of the U.S., a midwestern Missourian, was top man at Potsdam. Winston Churchill, the descendant of Marlborough, and Joseph Stalin, the Bolshevik dictator, made Harry Truman the chairman of their formal meetings. One evening he gave a state dinner for the other two, and afterwards he sat at a piano and played a minuet in G for them. One German, and one only, was in the room: Ludwig van Beethoven, who hated Prussianism and wrote the music.

"Volga! Volga!" Joseph Stalin turned up at Truman's dinner in a fawn-colored uniform with scarlet epaulets and the big Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union.

(Marx would have grumbled in his beard at the sight; but Engels, a bit of a fop himself, would have loved it.) Churchill, who had seen and envied Stalin's fawn outfit at Yalta, remembered that as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports he also was entitled to wear a fawn-colored uniform.

So he did. Truman wore a brown business suit. Of the 15 other guests, all except Admiral William D. Leahy wore civilian clothes.

After dinner Sergeant Eugene List of the U.S. Army preceded Truman at the piano. List's father was the best dancer in his part of Russia; people miles away asked him to dance at weddings and christenings. But he never got to dance for a tsar.*

List angled most of his program for Stalin: some Tchaikovsky, three Shostakovich preludes, folk songs of the Volga, the Caucasus and the steppes. Stalin loved the songs. He sprang up, shook List's hand, drank a toast to him and asked for more. Afterward Truman and Stalin gathered at one end of the room with their interpreters, the State Department's Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen and Vladimir N. ("Pinky") Pavlov, who had been at San Francisco with Molotov. Churchill, well briefed on Truman and his ways, broke up the twosome by asking List to play The Missouri Waltz. Truman listened happily. Then, aglow with cameraderie and his own bourbon, he went to the piano and played the minuet. Churchill and Stalin were enthusiastic.

Mincing Measure. The Truman dinner livened proceedings which had begun in a slow, mincing measure. Truman arrived first, by plane (TIME, July 23). Churchill flew in a little later. Stalin's train was a day late. Russian authorities ordered the shades pulled, the shutters closed in the houses along his route. Germans were not allowed to look upon the face of the man whose men had killed more than half of all their young killers. Truman drove around Berlin in an open car. In all the strange ruin, one sight was familiar: a monument to the German drillmaster of Valley Forge, Baron von Steuben. The statue in Potsdam, donated by a grateful U.S. Government, is a replica of one in Lafayette Square, opposite the White House.

Both Churchill and Stalin called--separately--on Truman. Stalin stayed to lunch. The two most powerful men in the world ate liver & onions. Next day both Churchill and Stalin invited Truman to lunch. Under the Potsdam trees, he strolled over to Churchill's first. With his daughter Mary beside him, Churchill was waiting on the lawn by the gate when Neighbor Truman lifted his hat and the latch. At about 3 o'clock Truman walked over to Stalin's. Knowing that his guest had already eaten, Stalin went easy. The meal included "caviar, fish and meat"--little enough by official Russian standards. Reporters noted that after lunch there were "signs of conviviality."

Rendezvous at the Lair. During the first days Churchill looked tired--almost ill--despite his week of post-election rest at Hendaye (see PEOPLE). The first night he did not sleep well. The British sentries' hobnailed shoes, ringing on the courtyard outside his window, bothered him. Next day the sentries got rubber-soled shoes and orders to keep out of the Prime Minister's sight and hearing. A historic rendezvous with his destiny seemed to pick him up.

Long ago he had said that he would track the Nazi beast to its lair. Last week he strode through the blackened ruins of Adolf Hitler's Chancellery. He stood, bulky and silent and triumphant, where "that guttersnipe" was last seen alive. He braved the stench to poke through the sordid disorder of the underground apartments where Hitler and Eva Braun last lived. At the spot where Hitler's body is supposed to have been burned, Churchill stared long and thoughtfully. When he turned away, chin down, his right hand formed the V-sign.

In the Tiergarten Churchill reviewed British troops. When he drove up, a group of soldiers cheered. Churchill thought the cheers were for him, raised his hand again in the V-salute. When he heard shouts of "Attlee!" Churchill quickly dropped his hand, glowered straight ahead. Laborite Deputy Prime Minister Clement R. Attlee, in a half-track just behind, smiled and waved.

In the Back Room. Vyacheslav M. Molotov, James F. Byrnes and Anthony Eden met every morning at 11 for "backroom'' sessions. Most of the first week's real work was done by the Foreign Commissar, the new Secretary of State, and the ailing Secretary for Foreign Affairs. (Churchill had Mrs. Eden flown to Potsdam to look after her husband. One of their two sons had just been reported missing in action in Burma, and Eden's stomach ulcer was still bothersome.)

Russia's role in the Pacific war and a unified control of Germany were certainly among the issues to be placed on the final agenda. So was the whole urgent question of divided Europe and Harry Truman's great desire to achieve what Franklin Roosevelt never got--a truly common Big Three policy for Europe, and, when the time came, for Asia.

Some said Truman brought a blueprint for Europe; others that Churchill and Stalin were naturally raising most of the specific issues. But nobody knew. In the first week no real political news of any kind leaked from Potsdam to 150 frustrated reporters in Berlin.

Cursed by their occupational disease-- the inability to say simply that nothing was known--they heaved & hauled to make something of nothing. By & large, the reporting from Potsdam's fringe last week was no credit to the world's press.

There were justified complaints that Truman and Churchill might well have pressed secretive Joe Stalin to consent to a general summary of the proceedings at reasonable intervals. But, in fact, the three were no more isolated than were Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during their two-way meetings, not to mention the arctic seclusion of Teheran and Yalta. The principal difference last week was that more reporters were nearer the doings.

Offstage Percussion. One day the Big Three got tangled up in their own security measures. They heard not-so-distant explosions. Were the Werewolves on the prowl? They sent a messenger to see. It took him an hour to thread his way through the Russian guards, stationed every 100 feet on Potsdam's streets, and discover that the noise was made by the U.S. Army's 502nd Ordnance Company. It was setting off delayed-action mines the Germans had left.

There were other offstage noises. The French were bitter about being left out, worried lest the Big Three would be too soft on Germany. Cracked the Paris weekly, Le Canard, Enchaine: "At Potsdam the Germans are dividing the Allies into four zones."

British, French and even German housewives murmured at the stories of strawberries, beefsteaks, Swiss watches and other luxuries flown in for the Big Three and their staffs. But in bomb-torn Croydon, a queue-bound British housewife, Mrs. Jean Baxter, took another view: "If all these lovely things help them to decide how to get a better world, I don't begrudge them anything."

Friends for the New World. Were they making progress? A terse U.S. communique said they were. They seemed to be getting on well personally. In Harry Truman's first contact with Stalin, that could be immensely important. Truman had already spent almost as many hours with Stalin as Roosevelt had with him in four days at Teheran and eight days at Yalta. Potsdam might last three weeks.

What news there was suggested only that the none-too-brave new world would like food, drink and music--and that some of the people in it would wear fawn-colored uniforms to dinner.

*Young List, a New York concert pianist, has traveled around Europe in his jeep, Bouncing Baby, playing for troops. When his wife, a New York violinist, heard that he had played for the Big'Three, she said: "Golly! Oh, golly!"

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