Brackets & Boiler Plate

The Foreign Ministers' Deputies, laboring in London over German and Austrian peace treaty drafts, last week had more brackets than boiler plate on their hands. "Boiler plate" (a U.S. newspaper term for ready-cast features) was how the U.S. staff referred to non-controversial provisions which the deputies simply lifted from the finished satellite treaties. "It's still in brackets" was the phrase used whenever the deputies indicated their disagreement by penciling brackets around a disputed passage.

Morning Bouts. In the mornings, when the deputies for Austria met, the chief antagonists were the U.S.'s General Mark W. Clark, veteran of many a bout with the Russians in Vienna, and Russia's Fedor T. Gusev. The most stubborn brackets between them:

1) Russia wants to saddle Austria with part of the formal "war guilt," while the U.S. and Britain want to say (as did the Moscow three-power declaration of November 1943) that Austria had merely been forced into Hitler's war, 2) Because Potsdam granted Russia German holdings in eastern Austria as reparations, Russia now claims all property seized by the Nazis during the occupation; the U.S. and Britain interpret the Potsdam clause to mean property owned by Germany before the Anschluss. 3) Russia wants to seize as war criminals most anti-Communist refugees from Soviet satellites who are now among the 400,000 D.P.s in Austrian camps; the U.S. and Britain insist that the Russians produce specific evidence before they make arrests.

Afternoon Musings. In the afternoons, the deputies for Germany progressed even more slowly. Three conflicting views on the future of Germany had emerged. Russia wants an economically weak Germany with a tightly controlling central government. France is pressing for maximum decentralization in a weak confederation of weak German states. The U.S. and Britain, shying away from either extreme, want a central authority strong enough to govern, superimposed on states which are independent only in local affairs. Britain and the U.S. want the Ruhr to be under German political rule, although both are moving closer to the French proposal for international economic control of Ruhr industries.

The chief procedural problem was still how big a role the small nations should be permitted to play in the treaty-making. Typical of Russia's attitude on the matter was a Gusev disquisition on the "states directly concerned" in the German peace. After all, mused he ("just thinking aloud"), could countries thousands of miles away from the war theaters really understand the war? Britain's Sir William Strang cracked back: what, for instance, about Canada, which had declared war on Germany in 1939--without waiting to be invaded first? Gusev let it go.

It was plain by now that the deputies' conference might serve merely as a preliminary to semifinals, not finals. The Foreign Ministers, when they meet in Moscow in March, are expected to throw most of the problems back to the deputies, with more or less specific instructions. A high U.S. diplomat last week estimated that it might be anywhere from nine months to two years before the peace treaty with Germany is finally written.

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