Paris Possibilities
The Paris Conference has been so deliberately prepared that its work at this stage can be presented in terms of historical geography and arithmetic. Arithmetic is being discussed first. The Big Four have recommended that the draft treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Finland, which they have presented to the Conference, shall only be altered by a two-thirds majority vote. Dr. Evatt, of Australia, has supported either a simple majority vote or a three-fifths majority. A committee on procedure must now choose the right formula. Mr. Molotov stands for the two-thirds majority and it is a reasonable presumption that if he stands firm, Britain, America and France will support him, since they have agreed in advance to that arrangement. But if that presumption is upset it may be at once revealed that the majority vote is only the Great Power veto in disguise. On the other hand the suggestion of the Jugoslav, delegate that even a two-thirds majority. is not enough and that no ethnic problems should be settled without the consent of the allied country directly concerned. This reveals the equally naked truth that in the long run voting formulas settle nothing in inter- national affairs. The questions of historical geography which provide the rest of the immediate issues can be tabulated with the aid of an elementary text-book on the Eastern Question and the text of the draft treaties. The questions on which the Big Four disagreed are largely those which never have been solved at any time in history. They are, how shall the various Balkan countries obtain access to the sea and what shall be the exact position of their mutual frontiers. Here again superficial agreement may be reached ; but here again a fundamental Russian requirement that the whole area shall remain, as it is now, in Russian domination, may be made explicit. The ostensible subject matter of the conference makes it a relatively minor affair, but it may yet turn out to be the minor case which settles the major questions.
