Twofold Relations With Russia
• Since the middle of December public exchanges between the Western Powers and the Soviet Government have been carried on at two levels. There is the comparatively high level of the negotiations aimed at a - Four-Power meeting of Foreign Ministers, which began with the Russian_proposal of November 3rd and have now reached the stage at which the British, French and United States Governments are waiting for a reply to their suggestion that deputies should meet in Paris on March 5th to decide the agenda. And there is the decidedly low level of the correspondence which began on December 16th with Notes addressed by the Soviet Government to the British and French Governments accusing them of having broken their treaties of friendship with Russia, as well as the Potsdam agreement, by embarking on the rearmament of Western Germany. The French Government has sensibly declared that this second correspon- dence must now cease. Since it consisted almost entirely of • recrimination and abuse it will not be missed. Speculation as to the Russian motives in starting the exchange is as profitless as usual. But there remains the rather curious point that all the more general criticisms of British and French policy have been packed into the Russian low-level series. The high-level series on the Four-Power meeting has also contained plenty of characteriitic Russian abuse but it has been for the most part confined to the question of Germany. What is more, Premier Stalin's interview with Pravda also belongs in the more general field. It begins-to look as if the Western Powers have scored a tactical success in refusing to allow the Four-Power talks to be confined to Germany. The Soviet Government has apparently been stung into self-defence on a wider front. This is all to the good, provided the Western Powers do not budge an inch from their contention that the proper place to discuss all these questions is at the Foreign Ministers' meeting.
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