Two Thanksgivings

After dinner on Thanksgiving Day a year ago, Jimmy Byrnes sat alone in his Washington office, abysmally gloomy. The world had peace, but the word sounded like a bad joke. The London meeting of the Foreign Ministers had failed; not even the beginning of a peace treaty was in sight; there were even fears that Russia would not attend the first U.N. Assembly in London.

Something had to be done. Jimmy Byrnes cabled his Ambassador in Moscow. He (and Britain's Bevin) went to Moscow, but they accomplished almost nothing. There was worse to come. The Russian tide was rising fast. The period of acute threats and melodramatic walkouts had to be lived through. Mr. Byrnes, groping through the labyrinthine mysteries of the Soviet mind, was to hear himself called an "appeaser" at home.

On Thanksgiving Day this year Mr. Byrnes was not alone, nor gloomy, nor groping. His new critics, whose influence was not great, said not that he was too weak, but that he was too strong. From the high-water mark reached at the Paris Peace Conference, the Russian tide was ebbing (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Beefsteak. Three weeks ago the deadlock on the Italian treaty seemed about to be broken by settling one point--the question of powers to be conferred on the U.N.-appointed governor of Trieste (TIME, Nov. 25). But that point proved a knotty one.

Last week Byrnes had an hour alone with Molotov--and presumably with Molotov's indispensable man, Translator Vladimir ("Pinky") Pavlov. Next day the Big Four had a cozy lunch with a mere handful of aides present. The only news that came out was that the conferees ate beefsteak.

The deadlock began to break. Mr. Molotov conceded that the governor should have all necessary powers to protect "civic and human rights."

Turkey. Next day Molotov made an even more startling concession. He agreed to freedom of navigation on the Danube, a principle which at Paris the Russians had damned as Western "dollar diplomacy."

Finally, Molotov made a whole string of minor concessions and a major one: he agreed "in principle" to the U.S. position that nations refusing to sign treaties would get no benefits from those treaties. This might work to deprive Russia's friend, Yugoslavia, of Italian reparations if Tito refused, as he had threatened, to sign the Italian treaty.

Affable Mr. Byrnes then said that the Foreign Ministers had worked hard, that they deserved a reward, that there was turkey on the sideboard. Mr. Molotov made a joke: he said that Turkey was not on the agenda. In view of "The Hammer's" new reasonableness, the least the others could do was to laugh heartily and politely.

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