What the Millions Watched

Was this the peace? Of the world's 2,000,000,000 people, at least 1,900,000,000 just did not care what became of Massaua's flea-bitten port, or of sun-baked Leros, or of Venezia Giulia's ragged purple mountains, or of dusty Kalgan, or of the fog-soaked Kurils. What the people did care about was tomorrow's bread or hunger, day-after-tomorrow's peace or war.

The Giants. Two recently isolated giants, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., were suddenly everywhere. Russia was claiming colonies in Africa, making friends among the Arabs, gripping eastern Eu rope, regaining its economic position in Manchuria, actively concerning itself with the control of Japan. The U.S., which five years ago seemed half-indifferent, was now insistently expressing its views on the internal politics of Balkan countries, expanding its influence in the Middle East, preparing to keep great island bases oppo site Russia's back door.

When the giants came together at the ill-tempered, ill-prepared London Council of Foreign Ministers, each seemed to the other aggressively expansionist. The U.S. was stronger, so the Russians talked tougher.

The Russians knew that the cumber some mass of Russian arms could not roll far beyond Russia's borders. One-third of the Red Army was already demobilized (see FOREIGN NEWS), and millions more would soon be returning to farms and fac tories. Russia's prospects of expansion by world revolution had seldom been slim mer. All over Europe, men looked else where than toward Communism for a kind of security and dignity that their prewar systems had failed to insure them. In consequence the Communist parties, far from being all-powerful or irresistible, were on the defensive--a fact which in part explained Russia's extreme aggressiveness at the conference tables.

In the Far East, brown men and yellow men just freed of a ruthless . Asiatic imperialism now fought the return of older European imperialisms--and Americans, standing willy-nilly with the returning imperialists, were caught in the line of fire (see FOREIGN NEWS).

It was not a world where one giant could blame everything upon the other. The first session of the Council of Foreign Ministers boded ill indeed for the Big Power peace. But the Ministers' meeting was only one milestone on a road.

Was the road going anywhere? The millions with a stake in the peace could not afford to be too impatient, too cynical. They could only worry -- and they did last week, when the world's problems seemed to be bigger than the world's leaders.

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