Message from Moscow

European newspapers labeled it "a diplomatic blockbuster" and, catching up with the times, "a diplomatic atomic bomb." The bomb: an eight-page Soviet note that landed in Washington, London and Paris last week, touching off flurries of press headlines and foreign-office bustle in capitals all over the world.

The message from Moscow caught the West by surprise, but once the haze of off-the-cuff interpretations cleared away, the move seemed logical, the motives obvious. On Nov. 3, the Kremlin had issued a heavy-handed note harshly spurning a U.S.-British-French 'proposal for a Big Four foreign-ministers' meeting in Lugano, Switzerland. That note, apparently drafted by underlings in Foreign Minister Molotov's absence, was patently a blunder. Its truculence "shocked the world," as the U.S. State Department put it; any neutralist could plainly see that the Russians did not want to reach agreement with the West.

A Task for Bermuda. Realizing that they had bobbled, the Russians soon shifted away from the tough line. Molotov, back from a vacation, held a rare press conference to explain to foreign correspondents that the Russian note had been "misunderstood." At that point, a new Russian note could have been predicted. When it arrived last week, it bore the marks of Molotov's skillful hand. Dropping the blunt demand of Nov. 3 that any East-West conference 1) include Red China, and 2) be preceded by abandonment of NATO and EDC, the Kremlin declared itself ready to take part in a Big Four foreign-ministers' meeting.

Moscow's move provided an urgent mission for this week's Big Three conference in Bermuda: deciding when and where and with what objectives to meet the Russians. The most important problem turned around the French attitude toward EDC. The dimness of EDC's prospects in the French National Assembly became obvious last week when the Laniel government barely survived a confidence vote (275 to 244, with 103 abstentions) on a resolution weakly supporting "the policy of building a united Europe" (see FOREIGN NEWS).

An Opportunity for the Reds. At last July's Big Three foreign-ministers' conference in Washington, Secretary of State Dulles let French Foreign Minister Bidault persuade him that France would not ratify

EDC until the East-West conference approach had been exhausted (TIME. July 20). Upshot: the Big Three kept proposing conferences to the Russians, and the French kept stalling on EDC while awaiting results of the proposals.

If the Russians come to the next conference table with a tough, unbudging attitude, they may help Dulles sell EDC to the French. But the Russians do not have to take the tough line. They can feed the wishful thinking of the French and other neutralists by peace-loving words and a few superficial concessions. Dulles' job at Bermuda will be to define the Western position so clearly that the Russians will not be able to divide the allies by a phony soft line.

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