- NEWS OF THE WEEK RESUMABLY there is some point in
the exchange of Notes between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union on the subject of a German peace treaty at which one side will get sick of it. But that point has not yet been eached, and the virtual absence of any new arguments from e Note delivered to Russia in Moscow on Tuesday and the ote from Moscow, dated August 23rd, to which it was a reply eems to indicate that, barren as the exchange may be, neither ide is going to accept the responsibility for ending it. It would e foolish to pretend that by insisting on the holding of free ll-German elections before any Four Power talks on a treaty an be held the Western Powers have cornered the Russians. The case for such elections is clear, and it is possible to point out—as the Western Powers have in fact done—that when the Soviet Government began the present exchange last May it proposed that the treaty should be prepared " with the participa- tion of Germany in the form of an all-German Government." But to a Russian Communist there is no fatal inconsistency in that. In fact the nearest approach to a concession on this question of elections is contained not in the Russian Note of August 23rd, but in a recent suggestion of the delegation from the People's Chamber of East Germany to the Bundestag of West Germany. It was that a Four Power meeting on a draft treaty, negotiations on German unification, and an investi- gation into the conditions for holding elections throughout Germany should all begin simultaneously. But the East German delegation was not well received in Bonn, and it is most unlikely that its proposals would be any better received in London or Washington or Paris. In any case the next move in the main exchange must now be made by Moscow. It is just possible that it will take the form of rejection of the Western Note, accompanied by further consolidation of the Conimunist position in East Germany, having as its object the perpetuation of the existing division. But that would be a singularly bad move, even from the Russian point of view, for the division of Germany is something that Germans will not allow to last for ever.
