-L-20 A-Begging

When the four Foreign Ministers filed into the conference room for their 44th, and final, session at 4 p.m., everything had been said that could be said. Molotov plodded over the familiar ground, trying to explain Russia's refusal to join the U.S. in a 40-year demilitarization treaty on Germany. Bevin, in the chair, looked at Marshall. "Any comment?" he asked. "No comment," said Marshall. Molotov again summed up Russia's demands for all property seized by the Germans in Austria. "Any comment?" asked Bevin. "No comment," said Marshall.*

Then, after agreeing to refer the German assets question to a committee of experts (meeting in Vienna May 12) and to scale down occupation forces in Germany (with a June 1 deadline for agreement on the size of forces), the Foreign Ministers said the polite things one says to his host. Marshall smilingly thanked Molotov for keeping chain-smoking U.S. Adviser Ben Cohen in cigarets. As Cohen blushed and glanced at his plateful of butts, Bevin said, "Well, we can help on that too," tossed Cohen a pack of English cigarets. At 7:35, with a round of handshaking, the conference adjourned.

Toasted in Absence. At 9 o'clock the Foreign Ministers, each with ten members of his staff, met again as guests of Generalissimo Stalin. They fed sumptuously on caviar, out-of-season cucumbers, fish salad, hot zakuski (hors d'oeuvres), consomme, fish, turkey, chicken, roast beef, suckling pig, ice cream, coffee and liqueurs. They drank some 20 toasts, in vodka, white and red wine, champagne. One toast, proposed by Stalin, was for an absent man: President Truman. After dinner, the guests saw The Stone Flower (TIME, Jan. 27), a gentle Russian fairytale film with only a faint overlay of class consciousness. (General Mark Clark commented that the beautiful sorceress in the picture had something of the haunting elusiveness of the still unsigned Austrian peace treaty.)

Echeloned in Depth. Next day the guests departed--the Americans by plane, the British and French by special trains--making the small, cheerful sounds appropriate to the occasion. As Bevin climbed on his special train, Vishinsky warbled, in Russian, a drinking song, "The more we get together the merrier we'll be." Bevin descended to the platform, joined the chorus: "For your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends." The next merry get-together of the peripatetic Foreign Ministers Conference is scheduled for London in November, with possibly a preliminary warm-up at the New York U.N. Assembly meeting in September.

General Clark, back in Vienna, had a military metaphor that summed up the conference: "Russia gave us impossible demands, echeloned in depth." The conference, said the Paris independent Combat, "failed beyond all expectations, and since much was not expected, it would be sheer folly to express the slightest optimism."

From aloof Eire came a reminder that history, even in its moments of crisis like the Moscow disagreement, is fleeting. The Dublin Theatre Royal's weekly quiz program offered -L-20 to anyone who could name all four Foreign Ministers at Moscow. No one could.

* For Marshall's comments after his return to the U.S., see NATIONAL AFFAIRS.

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