This Is the Peace

It was a great day for the impeccable Jacques Dumaine, chief of protocol at the Quai d'Orsay, who is known around press rooms and chancelleries as Jeeves. In magnificent cutaway, his monocle fixed now in his right, now in his left eye, he was the embodiment of conventional diplomacy. With discreet gestures of guidance, he led delegate after delegate to a huge table in the French Foreign Ministry's Galerie de la Paix where the Allies signed their lenient peace treaties with Hitler's former allies, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. After the signing, the treaties were sent to Moscow, for safekeeping.

The treaties provided for an 18 months' probation period, during which the Allied military missions in Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia were to watch, "in concert," the activities of the defeated nations. Last week, the probation period was up. The U.S. and Britain took the occasion to tell the world how the three Russian satellites respected their solemn obligations.

Flagrant Violations. The treaties, said the U.S. State Department, have been "flagrantly violated" by Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. The three satellites have ignored the clauses limiting their armed forces, both by building up regular armies larger than permitted and recruiting "irregular" formations, such as "frontier guards," militia, etc. They have consistently sabotaged the "property rights" of the Western nations, guaranteed under the treaties, notably by expropriating U.S. and British oil companies. Above all, in a long series of political and religious persecutions, they have trampled on the treaty clauses in which they promised to all their citizens "without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, the enjoyment of human rights and of the fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, of press and publication, of religious worship, of political opinion and of public meeting."

Reserved Rights. Every time the U.S. protested against treaty violations, said the State Department, the satellites pointed out that protests must be made "in concert" with the West's Russian allies. The Russians flatly refused to act in concert--or to act at all except in support of the local Reds. Huffed the State Department: "The U.S. Government reserves all its rights under the treaties ..."

What were those "rights"? The U.S. can request the setting up of an arbitration commission to be composed of Western and Russian representatives plus one neutral. If agreement on the choice of this neutral cannot be reached, the U.S. may ask U.N. to appoint one. If the commission, once set up, still fails to reach agreement, the U.S. can, of course, always go to U.N.'s Security Council--and there run up against the Russian veto. This was the peace to which 18 months ago Jeeves had so grandly guided the nations.

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