Spasm of Aggression

UNO's first session had given a reasonable hope that the nations might be able to get along with each other. But last week, in & out of UNO, came a series of Russian moves, from Canada to Syria to Manchuria, that added up to a worldwide Russian power drive. When the week ended, international relations were at their worst point since the war's end.

Russian policy alternates between spasms of aggressive expansionism and fits of sweet reasonableness. Last week the pattern of Soviet truculence was wider, deeper, more varied and more significant than the stubborn Russian cynicism which deadlocked the Foreign Ministers' Council meeting last October. In technique the truculence ranged from espionage to open fighting; in principle it ranged from persistent denial of free speech to violation of treaties. It endangered the UNO charter by use of the veto (the first by any power) on a relatively trivial issue;, it endangered the preparation of the peace treaties by consistent refusal to make any concessions whatever.

Who Gets Out? The touchiest point in U.S.-Russian relations was the Far East--and well the Russians knew it. Because they did not want a showdown with the U.S., the Russians had behaved with relative restraint in the delicate negotiations between the Chinese National Government and the Chinese Communist Party. Now they vastly complicated those negotiations by postponing the Red Army's withdrawal from Manchuria and by asking for further concessions in the richest industrial area of the Far Eastern mainland. Not only had they failed to withdraw on Feb. 1, as they had promised, but there were reports that the Red Army was rebuilding Manchurian installations which it had dismantled in preparation for departure. The Red Army's presence encouraged a new outbreak of Chinese Communist skirmishes with Kuomintang troops in Manchuria.

Only by patience and skill would the Chinese Government find a way of living with its militant Communist minority. No Chinese Government, however, could accept an equal Russian economic partnership in China's northwestern provinces. The Russians were apparently trying to find out whether the U.S. would abandon its commitments to China and its own strategic stake in the western Pacific.

Who Lurks Where? Ottawa's 22 arrests in an international spy ring pointed straight at Russia. Rumors flew that U.S. arrests were near. Russia's professional spy system is as good as they come. In the field of scientific espionage Russia has the special advantage of amateur assistance. There is no doubt that Russian Communism holds a peculiar attraction for some scientists and technicians. That Russia should seek atomic information was certainly not surprising. Other countries would do the same. The Canadian spy arrests, however, deeply disturbed international relations by calling attention to one of the most frightening aspects of Russian policy. The connection between Russia's worldwide Communist parties and espionage and other subversive activities poisoned Russia's relations with the rest of the world for two decades.

Last week a member of the U.S. Senate Atomic Energy Committee placed an unfair but inevitable interpretation on the Canadian case: "A number of scientists have been straining to have the atomic secrets given to Russia. They are so anxious about it that Russia probably can get all the information she wants." If patriotic scientists resented the Senator's implication, they could partly blame the Russian practice of making use of thousands of stooges in other countries.

Who Goes Home? In UNO, Andrei Vishinsky preached Soviet doctrine in the form most repulsive to the West. Vishinsky insisted that each country should control its own refugees, wherever located, and should be allowed to force them to return home. He denounced all "propaganda" against UNO and its members in the refugee camps.

Eleanor Roosevelt led the opposition, her voice shrill with emotion. "What is propaganda?" she asked. "Are we too weak in the United Nations to let people hear whatever they want to hear?" Until oppositionists could return home "unscathed and unhampered," she urged that UNO aid those who refused to go back. The packed galleries gave her a rousing ovation. Vishinsky retorted with a typical Soviet twister: "No democracy can permit tyranny to do what it wants. . . . We refuse to accept such tolerance." The UNO General Assembly backed Mrs. Roosevelt, 31-to-10.

The U.S. case as usual had been damaged by U.S. practice. In Bavaria, one General Radovan Popovitch had organized 10,000 compatriots into a "Royal Yugoslav Army," rented some of them out to the U.S. Army. Washington ordered these mercenaries dismissed. At week's end Vishinsky presented a Tito complaint against the use on the Italo-Yugoslav frontier of General Wladyslaw Anders' emigre Polish army--which is paid by the British.

Who Says No? In two other Russian fights during UNO's last wearing week, Vishinsky traded tactical loss for strategic gain. The Security Council voted down his demand for an Indonesian investigation, which gave Russia her chance to pose before the world's dependent peoples as their UNO paladin.

Russia donned Mussolini's old mantle as Protector of Islam. Syria and Lebanon had protested against the presence of British and French troops. Tireless Ed Stettinius (who did an effective job of conciliation at UNO) finally got British and French agreement to withdraw "as soon as practicable." Vishinsky, who had argued the strong Levantine case brilliantly, would have none of this compromise.

Dramatically, he invoked the veto. At San Francisco the Big Five had assured the small nations that the veto would be used only as a last resort and on major issues. The Syria-Lebanon issue was not a major one and the difference between Stettinius and Vishinsky was small; observers concluded that Russia would use the veto any time she felt so inclined.

Who Wants What? In London the foreign ministers' deputies, who have been hashing over peace preliminaries, bogged down. They had discovered that no one treaty or situation can be settled by itself, because Russia sees the peace problem as a whole. Thus Russia might eventually desert Tito on Trieste if she can get what she wants in Iran, while her demand for a sole trusteeship of Tripoli may be a bargainer for complete freedom of the Dardanelles. Meanwhile the Russian delegates can only parrot well-known Moscow claims in well-worn formulas. Unless the deadlock is soon., broken from above, the Big Four's draft treaties for Europe will not be ready in time for the 21-power Paris Peace Conference in May.

Between now and then, Russia may have another lucid spell. But the reasonable periods have been getting shorter, the truculent spells more violent.

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