New World

The Ides of March were uneasy. In a Britain plagued by blizzards, floods and landslides,* the Army asked the House of Commons for a sizable budget. Heavy snow in Eire curtailed the export of shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. In Naples, striking bakers raided the University library and burned books. In Moscow, Atomic Scientist Peter Kapitza, variously reported purged or resting, emerged to publish a learned paper entitled: "Theoretical and Empirical Expressions for Heat Transfers in a Turbulent Stream."

But one event last week so affected history's turbulent stream that British miners and Italian bakers, Irish shamrock growers and Russian scientists might never live quite the same lives again. As one Briton put it: "We went to sleep in one world and woke up ... in another."

The Deadly Conflict. President Truman's speech (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) called for new alignments and new directions in every country in the world. Many a paragraph in it clawed crabwise before the winds of political expediency. It left a lot of questions unanswered (example: Why was it right for the U.S. to fight Communists' efforts to enter the Greek Government when it had lately been urging Chiang Kai-shek to take Communists into the Chinese Government?). Nevertheless, the total purport of the message was clear to the world: the U.S., realizing (however dimly and belatedly) that it was engaged in a deadly struggle with Communism (see below), had begun a positive effort to organize a non-Communist world. The world, knowing well that more than Greece and Turkey, more than the Mediterranean and the Middle East were involved in the Truman speech, reacted to the U.S.'s newly invigorated policy.

The Soviet Union lay low; its press snarled "Hitlerism." The Communists could be expected to feel out the new U.S. policy by offensives in areas far from Greece. Poland's press bitterly complained that, after such "expansion by the means of loans," the U.S. would not have enough left over for "needy countries" (such as Poland). Obviously looking for assistance from closer friends, Premier Josef Cyrankiewicz and Industrial Minister Hilary Mine had just junketed to Moscow for joint-defense and trade talks (see cut).

The Terriers' Bark. On the other hand, Winston Churchill cried: "If such a step had been taken by the U.S. before the last war, it would have stopped it." But the U.S.'s bluntness almost gave the Foreign Office heart failure. Said one old Whitehall hand wistfully: "When I think how many millions we in our heyday spread around the world--quietly and discreetly." Said the News Chronicle: "Mr. Truman has given . . . the impression that he has sent the Yankee terriers scuttling down the streets of Athens and Ankara with a bright red can tied to their tails, barking a shrill and slightly hysterical message of salvation."

Athens and Ankara liked the bark of the Yankee terriers. Both thanked the U.S. profusely; the Athens municipal council voted to name a city street for Harry Truman.

"A Declaration of War." The sharpest, most revealing reaction came from bowed and bitter Italy, a critical testing ground for democracy's powers of resistance--and offense. From Rome, TIME Correspondent Emmet Hughes reported: "There was no doubt this time that the U.S. means business. Wrote Rome's conservative Risorgimento Liberate: 'We are confronted with a declaration of war, limited to the ideological plane but nonetheless categorical.' Christian Democratic Party leaders reason that if the U.S. is backing George of Greece despite the character of his regime, it will go much further in support of the Christian Democrats here.

"From the extreme left come screams of pain and wrath. The Communist press flays 'trusts and Tommies' guarding 'the Dollar Curtain.' Pro-Communist Pietro Nenni's Avanti slammed at the right for welcoming the so-called American protection: 'Germans yesterday. Americans today. Italians never.'

"The Roman man-in-the-street simply says: 'Thank God, we know where the U.S. stands.' But one important reservation was expressed by a barber in a well-known shop patronized by haggard Assembly deputies. Said he: 'Well, I suppose all this makes things clearer, but when it's between Greece and Turkey on one side and Russia and Yugoslavia on the other, it's a devil of a choice you give us.'"

Hope--and a Shudder. "On the opposite side of Rome, indeed in another country altogether, a top official of the Vatican's Secretariat of State summed up soberly: 'Russia's grand contribution to liberty with its battle against Naziism is and will forever remain admirable. Yet the fact is that this decision of America's brings the promise of liberty to millions, and liberty for all peoples there must be, whoever brings it. But the real task remains--to find exact definitions for the words "liberty, democracy, justice" . . . that are everywhere acceptable and applicable. Because of past failure to form these definitions we have been brought away from what should have been the bright threshold of peace close to what looks like the dark doorway to war.' "

Hughes summed it all up: "Everywhere, racing tongues and typewriters, trying to articulate racing hopes and fears, greeted the dramatic appearance of the U.S. in the center of the world arena with some hysteria, much hyperbole, great hope-- and a perceptible shudder."

*This week, Britain's worst flood of this century and a hurricane that killed at least 15 spread terror in southern England.

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