Tough Talk

Vyacheslav Molotov made a quick trip last week to Prague. At his behest, the Foreign Ministers of Russia's seven East European satellites were on hand to confer with him. There was good reason to believe that the Soviet Deputy Premier had a communique all ready in his pocket for the lesser comrades to initial.

It was a truculent document, devoted mostly to vilifying the Western powers for their plan to rearm Western Germany (". . . the aggressive bloc of the so-called Atlantic pact [is trying] to make [Germany] definitely a tool of their aggressive, war-strategic plans in Europe . . ."). Then, crying "peace and international security," the communique demanded a Big Four "proclamation" banning the remilitarization of Germany, a peace treaty to be followed by the withdrawal of occupation forces, a new "All-German Constitutional Council" uniting East and West Germany.

Most of this was old hat. It meant, as always, a settlement of the German issue on terms favorable to Red conquest. In Berlin, Communist-wise Mayor Ernst Reuter observed: "We've heard these proposals a hundred times. The Russians know that they are no basis for serious negotiations. We can't touch anything that doesn't first off promise free elections in all Germany . . . The Russians are speculating on finding weak spots in the Western armor, and they may well find them."

Most obvious weak spot was France, where muddled politicians still objected to a strong Germany (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Equally rough was Pravda's reply last week to President Harry Truman's San Francisco speech (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Not Russia but the U.S., fumed the Kremlin mouthpiece, had blocked the path of peace. Truman's statements to the contrary were "rude, ridiculous pretensions [that] could originate only in the mind of a warmonger."

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