Peace Offensive

The Soviet government, said Pravda, "is manifesting a desire to improve relations with the Western powers." Some of the manifestations:

P: In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov pledged Russian "solidarity" with Red China's offer to "put an end to the bloody Korean war." He did not make Peking's admission to the U.N. a precondition of peace.

P: In Berlin, Soviet Supreme Commander General Vasily I. Chuikov invited R.A.F. officers to sit down with their Russian opposite numbers to discuss ways of preventing "regrettable incidents" in the air. He later invited the U.S. and France to join in the talks, which took place in a setting stage-dressed with cigars, champagne and World War II camaraderie. Chuikov also addressed a letter to a West German Communist front declaring that "your wish for a [Big Four] conference ... on a peace treaty for Germany, and its reunification, corresponds fully with the point of view of the Soviet government."

P: In the U.N. Security Council, the Soviet delegation said yes to a Swede for U.N. Secretary General (see below), and Soviet Delegate Andrei Vishinsky hinted that Russia may have changed its attitude on disarmament. Instead of demanding an unconditional ban on atomic weapons, he now showed signs of interest in the Western plan for disarmament by stages, with enforceable guarantees.

P: Moscow kept its promise to release British and French civilians interned in North Korea since the Communist capture of Seoul in 1950. Fourteen Frenchmen, including two diplomats, one newsman and five nuns, were en route from Moscow on their way home to France. Six Britons and an Irish priest were "in process of repatriation."

P: The Russians pardoned a British sailor named George Robinson, who was jailed last September for drunkenly assaulting a Soviet official in the port of Archangel; they let him go in Berlin.

P: Moscow promised to send a Soviet warship to the June naval review in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation. Red flags in Berlin were half-masted on the day of Queen Mary's funeral.

P: Soviet President Voroshilov told the new Dutch Ambassador to the Kremlin that Soviet-Netherlands relations ought to be "consolidated."

P: Heavy trucks on the Autobahn between Berlin and West Germany were waved past Soviet check points that had once held them for days; locks on the Mittelland Canal, closed since last August for "repairs," were mended overnight.

P: East German Catholic and Evangelical churches got $200,000 to repair 104 blitzed church buildings.

P: At Spandau prison in East Berlin, the commander of the Russian guard pulled off his glove to greet his U.S. counterpart with the barehanded grip of friendship.

P: The U.S. embassy in Moscow, ordered last July to get out of its fine building overlooking the Kremlin, was informed that it might stay on if it wished. (Washington replied that it would just as soon move the embassy as planned to a new building under construction.)

P: Visas were issued to a group of U.S. small-town editors (see PRESS), who goggled at the Moscow subways, dined on caviar and capons, and exchanged toasts to the Premier of Russia and the President of the U.S.

P: Four Soviet officials and their wives came early and stayed late at a cocktail party given by U.S. Charge d'Affaires Jacob D. Beam.

Each new gesture got wide attention the world over, but the fact is that Russia achieved its effect by the number of its moves, not by the substance of them. There were concessions on the Berlin blockade, not an end to it; a harmless drunk was released, not an important kidnap victim like Berlin's brave Dr. Linse. Peace might come in Korea, and this would indeed be substantial news, but it had not come yet, and the possibilities of delay and dissension at Panmunjom were as great as before.

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