NEWS OF THE WEEK
THOUGH the proceedings of the Foreign Ministers in Paris have unexpectedly dragged on a week longer than was expected, there is as little to show for the last phase of the discussions as there was for the earlier. On one matter of any substance, the signature of revised armistice terms for Italy, which will permit that unhappy country to resume something like normal political life without an army of occupation within its borders, agreement has indeed been reached. On everything else complete disagreement persists, with M. Molotov usually in a minority of one. There can be no talk of signing a treaty with Italy, because there is no accord about Trieste and the surrounding regions, or about reparations or about the details of the disposal of the Italian fleet. Austria, bearing an intoler- able burden of Allied occupation, is not being discussed because M. Molotov is not ready to discuss it. Discussion talks on Germany have been entered on, and the French plan for the Ruhr presented by M. Bidault, but there is little prospect of any early agreement being reached here either. A date for the proposed Peace Confer- ence (which was to have met on May 1st) cannot be fixed because M. Molotov is not prepared to fix it. All the Ministers have been able to do is to decide to meet somewhere in a month or so's time and try again. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the seriousness of these sustained disagreements, for while they continue Europe remains economically and politically paralysed, no longer in a state of actual war, but not in sight of anything like peace. Nor can any end of the paralysis be predicted. America might attempt to make a separate peace with, for example, Italy, and Britain might be dis- posed to follow suit. But while that might establish normal rela- tions between those two Allies and Italy, the Italian frontiers could not be settled without the full concurrence of all the major Allies. The crop of unsettled questions, together with some new ones, is now handed to the Foreign Ministers' deputies to work at for a few weeks more. It is a desperate situation, with no hopeful outcome visible.
