Logs Moving

A room that held both Bevin and Molotov would never be mistaken for a college reunion. But after the table-thumping displays of bad manners at London, the air of sober, workmanlike cordiality at Moscow seemed reassuring.

Beetles & Buoyancy. The three Foreign Ministers had three meeting places. Significantly, the sessions grew more informal. First they gathered at a long, document-piled table in the big conference room of Spiridonovka Palace. Everyone had a gleaming white satin chair, decorated with embroidered gold beetles. Four days later they moved to a smaller, red-plush room, where the three, with a few aides, simply sat around and spoke their minds. At week's end they met in Russia's holy of holies, the Kremlin. That meant that Stalin was taking a hand.

Stalin's return from Sochi was the conference turning-point. Suntanned and rested after his 68-day holiday, he had long separate sessions with Bevin and Byrnes. Soon afterwards the conference developed an obvious feeling of buoyancy, previously missing. Once more, apparently, Stalin had proved himself the only Russian who can make quick decisions. But if the log jam had been broken, the drive was still a long way from smooth water.

The list of logs that needed a shove was impressive. On the biggest, control of the atom, London heard that the talks were going well. But no statesman had quite faced the fact that atomic control presupposes that international inspection will prove both technically and politically possible. The Russian character and the semi-conspiratorial background of the Soviet regime were against easy acceptance of any inspection scheme. There was a good chance that a plan of agreement would be drafted in Moscow, but the odds on real atomic control in 1946 stayed remote.

Togas & Trios. If the other logs were smaller, they were still of awkward sizes. Iran (see FOREIGN NEWS) posed a question the League never solved: what action will UNO take if a small power accuses a great power of aggression? Korea, still split between U.S. and Russian occupation zones, symbolized a whole set of answers needed on dependent areas and trusteeship. The Moscow press showed that Molotov was mincing no words on the Far East--Pravda challenged the presence of U.S. troops in China, and Izvestia complained that the U.S. tolerated "Japanese militarists in the toga of democrats."

How would peacemaking be resumed? While Byrnes and Bevin regularly saw the French and Chinese Ambassadors, the authoritative New Times said that Russia favored continued (and exclusive) meetings of the Big Three. Meanwhile, Jimmy Byrnes tried some personal peacemaking in the Balkans. He agreed to recognize Tito's Yugoslav Republic, though pointing to "its failure to implement the guarantee of personal freedom" laid down at Yalta. Bevin followed suit. At London, Byrnes had tried to ease the tension by recognizing Hungary. Washington thought he might now do the same with Rumania and Bulgaria, though their one-front regimes were as repressive as ever.

There was one hopeful language note.

To Russian pleasure, Byrnes had learned to use the word soglasen ("I agree")* Molotov was equally diplomatic, threw in an occasional "O.K."

*Byrnes also learned to say nyet, meaning "no." Molotov long ago learned the English word for nyet.

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