A Wider Roof

Britain's Ernest Bevin spoke with fervor and measured hope: "We have today embarked on a great adventure ... a most famous historical undertaking . . . This new [North Atlantic] pact brings us under a wider roof of security ... It is certainly one of the greatest steps toward world peace ... a new era of cooperation and understanding . . .

"The pact recognizes the common heritage and civilization of [the Western] peoples, founded on principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law . . . It is based on an understanding and a determination to preserve our way of life . . . No nation innocent of aggressive intentions need have the slightest fear or apprehension . . ."

Parliament rang with "Hear! Hear!" Editorialists cheered. The man-in-the-pub took it all with quiet satisfaction. Dissent was small indeed--but sharp. Cried Communist Harry Pollitt: "The U.S. wants to use this country as its unsinkable aircraft carrier and base for the dispatch of the atomic bomb."

We Ha ve What We Wanted. France's Robert Schuman spoke with vigor and firmness: "Today we obtain what we hoped for vainly between the two wars. The United States recognizes there can be no peace nor security for America if Europe is in danger . . ."

French cheers were less solid than British, French dissent more furious and determined. Snarled Communist Boss Maurice Thorez: "Hypocritical phrases and lies . . . Today there rises the ghost of the new war . . We are now chained to the war chariot of the American billionaires." L'Humanite shrilled: "The war pact is signed!"

The Reds vociferously carried the issue into the weekend's cantonal elections. They were rebuffed. The vote showed 61% of the French electorate in favor of the Atlantic pact, 15% (the Socialists) noncommittal, only 24% opposed.

The Fight Has Just Begun. Italy, invited to join the new Atlantic union, bucked through the week's most savage and stinging easterly squall. For 52 filibustering hours in a turbulent Chamber of Deputies, Palmiro Togliatti's Communists and Pietro Nenni's fellow-traveling Socialists tried to block Premier Alcide de Gas-peri's request for permission to accept the Western invitation. "You buffoon! You infamous one!" screamed Togliatti at De Gasperi. Mass fist fights spotted the debate. Infuriated Communists brandished chairs, hurled desk drawers. One partisan jumped across four benches, tramped on the heads of his comrades as he dived viciously into the fray. Outside, in the streets of Rome and other cities, Marxists yelled "Peace! Down with war!" and led demonstrators against club-swinging police.

The sound & fury failed. Kept alert by strong black coffee, sleeping by turns inside the chamber, the anti-Communists outlasted their opponents. By a brisk vote of 342-170, De Gasperi sailed through with authority to join the Atlantic pact (he had still to win Senate approval). Togliatti bawled: "You will have to reckon with the Italian people!" Fellow Traveler Nenni echoed: "The fight has just begun!" Government supporters triumphantly sang the national anthem-"Brothers of Italy ... of Italy awakened." Marxists responded with Garibaldi's defiant old war chant--"Foreigners, get out of Italy!"

Two Centers of Power. Clearly Russia and her minions were girded for a powerful polemical battle--not to stop the North Atlantic pact, since it was now an accomplished fact, but to weaken and delay its implementation, hinder its extension, sow distrust of its intentions. Beyond polemics there would be further pressure --among other places, in Eastern Germany, where the Russian occupation authority last week pushed the formation of a Communist state; in the Far East, where the victorious Chinese Communists denounced the North Atlantic pact, and declared that they would stand solidly behind Moscow in any future war.

The Kremlin had set the propaganda theme, harshly repeated last week over Radio Moscow, in a White Paper issued last January by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Verbose, bristling, heavy-footed with dialectical cliches, this document rejected all moves toward Western union, from last year's Brussels treaty to the looming North Atlantic alliance, as inspired by "warmongers," designed to "undermine" U.N. and "isolate" the U.S.S.R.: "The ruling circles of the United States and Great Britain have adopted an openly aggressive political course the final aim of which is to establish forcibly Anglo-American domination the world over."

The Kremlin was surely more surprised by the speed and scope of the Atlantic pact negotiations than by the bare fact of its creation. In 1927 Stalin had postulated the inevitability of two hostile worlds. "In the course of further development of international revolution," he said, "two centers will form on a world scale . . . The struggle between these two centers for the possession of the world economy will decide the fate of capitalism and Communism in the whole world."

Under Stalin's hand the binding to Moscow (i.e., "the socialist center") has been proceeding apace. Since December 1943, 16 separate treaties of military alliance have knitted together the Soviet motherland and her East European brood. The last of these (linking Russia, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria) were signed between January and March 1948--a year before the emergence of a counterpart in the West.

Security Is Indivisible. The Kremlin's White Paper on the North Atlantic pact also pointed out "contradictions and frictions," i.e., weaknesses which the faithful must tactically exploit, in the Western comity. Among them:

P: "The aggressive aspirations of the chief partners within the Anglo-American bloc [which] clash with each other at every turn."

P: "The contradictory interests of the large and small countries participating."

P: "The tremendous upsurge of the national liberation movement ... in the Orient."

P: "The powerful support rendered the Soviet Union by the democratic forces [i.e., Communist fifth columns] in all countries."

Some of these chinks in the Western armor were exaggerated. Others were real. The Atlantic pact was a crashing diplomatic defeat for world Communism, but of itself it would not strike at the roots of Communist power nor guarantee the anti-Communist world against attacks. Rather, the pact was a recognition of danger and a resolution to build common defenses. The very achievement of an Atlantic pact underlined the failure to build an Asiatic defense against Communism.

Security was indivisible. Regional pacts could contribute to it, but they could not substitute for a worldwide system of binding joint defense against aggression. In the end, the Atlantic pact could be measured not by its high purpose, but by the practical cooperation it engendered among its members, and its ability to grow into a global defense against Communism.

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