Delays in Paris
The impatience which what must be termed the dithering of the Foreign Ministers' deputies at Paris inevitably arouses is not to be laid at the door of the Soviet delegate alone. On the Allied side ineptitude has been conspicuous. At the end of last week the American delegate Dr. Jessup enumerated (as the Spectator had already done) the points in common between the draft Allied agenda and the draft Russian agenda. These so plainly outweighed the outstanding differences that a failure to secure final agreement is not easily intelligible. Mr. Gromyko, no doubt, might well have accepted the revised Allied clause, which associated the examination of the causes of tension in Europe with the question of German armaments, but the original Russian draft provided for dis- cussion of " improvement of the situation in Europe " associated with the question of a general reduction of armed forces. The difference is one not of subject but of order, the Allies being determined that the question of German armaments shall not be taken first. But Mr. Gromyko, continuing to surpass them in concessions, has now spoken of " demilitarisation " instead of " re-militarisation " of Germany. Mr. Davies and his colleagues seem to ignore the fact that either term enables the whole question of rearmament in Eastern Germany to be dis- cussed. It is true that Mr. Gromyko still insists on this clause coming first. This may. of course, be a manoeuvre. but
if the Russians are out for manoeuvre the Foreign Ministers'
Conference will come to nothing in any case. If on the other hand Marshal Stalin genuinely desires serious discussions the order of the agenda is of little consequence. The regular practice at international conferences is to discuss one subject fully, but not to reach a decision till the other questions have been debated. That is inevitable, since one decision so closely affects another. The preliminary Paris Conference matters much less than it appears to ; the essential thing is to get the Con- ference of Foreign ministers convened
