NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers, like the London Conference of Foreign Ministers last September, is ending to all appearance in almost complete deadlock. Agreement, it is true, has been reached on a few questions of secondary importance. On all major issues, notably on whether Italy shall pay reparations and if so how much, on the disposition of the Italian colonies, on Venezia Giulia and Trieste, on the framing of the treaties with the Balkan States, failure to agree has been complete, while Mr. Byrnes' pro- posal for a twenty-five-year military alliance between the four Great Powers to ensure the disarmament of Germany has fallen entirely flat. What is worse in some respects than these individual failures is the renewed demonstration of the gulf which on almost every question separates Britain and America on the one side from Russia on the other, with France tending sometimes one way, sometimes the other, but usually supporting the Anglo-Saxon Powers. Even more disquieting is the accumulation of evidence that Russia, quite possibly from a genuine though quite unreasonably excessive anxiety about security, is as concerned to create a Russian Osteuropa as Germany ever was to construct a German Mitteleuropa. Out of the Paris failure arises the problem of procedure. A general Peace Conference to put the nations of Europe on a new footing and let the defeated States in particular know where they stand was to have been convened on May 1st. That .hope was long since aban- doned, and the new hope that the Foreign Ministers would be able to put the draft treaties in a proper state to be laid before the. larger conference has gone the same way. Is there any advantage in convening the peace conference as things stand? Mr. Byrnes thinks there is, on the principle apparently that a general discussion may, by developing a prepondance of opinion, make progress where the four Foreign Ministers reached a standstill. The Dominion Prime Ministers in London, who have views of their own and desire an opportunity of expressing them, are of the same opinion. M. Molotov, it would seem, is not. The Conference of Four, which appears to be in articulo mortis as these words are written, may possibly reach a compromise agreement on this point before expiring.
