The Knights of Yalta

Comic-strip husbands always say "Honest, I was at a lodge meeting," because Maggie, Silly Milly et al. cannot penetrate the fraternal secrecy to check up on them. Last week, more & more international politicos were joining the Knights of Yalta.

The U.S. and British Governments had both shown uncertainty about what Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin whispered to each other by the Black Sea. That Secretary of State Byrnes (himself a charter member of the Knights) did not know of the Yalta deal on China was an invitation to everybody in need of an alibi to blame it on Yalta.

In Manchuria, the Red Army's Major General Andrei Kovtun-Stankevich was the latest to apply for admission to the lodge. He told nine British and U.S. correspondents who asked why Mukden's factories were stripped (see FOREIGN NEWS) that the Big Three had okayed these Russian removals "either at Yalta or Berlin--I'm not sure, offhand."

Byrnes, whose life is one long series of surprises, said he knew of no such agreement. He hastily consulted fellow Knights in Washington; at week's end the State Department formally denied any agreement, "secret or otherwise." Then Moscow calmly broadcast that Anglo-American reporters had "wholly fabricated" the Stankevich statement. Not even Moscow would think Allied newsmen had made up a story about Yalta unless it had become all too clear that almost anybody could play.

From London the U.P. reported that "a source close to the British Foreign Office" had admitted a "secret clause" in the Yalta agreement under which Russian civilians found in the West could be forcibly repatriated as pretended members of the Soviet armed forces. This was probably a phony--but who could be sure?

Every day brought a new one. An international rumor not ascribed to Yalta was no more respectable than a resident of Boston's Back Bay whose ancestors had not come over in the Mayflower.

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