WASHINGTON IN JULY
T is difficult to see from the outside which of the long list of possible subjects the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Britain and France are going to discuss thoroughly at Washington, and with what object they are going to discuss them. To Sir Winston Churchill himself the proposed Bermuda meeting with President Eisenhower was at best a preliminary to a later meeting with Mr. Malenkov, so that, if Lord Salisbury is taking Sir Winston's line, Washington is a preliminary to a preliminary. Mr. Dulles, Whose ready acceptance of the proposal for a meeting with Lord Salisbury and M. Bidault in Washington reflected more politeness than enthusiasm, may perhaps add to this rather unpromising formula a private hope that there will be no early sequel to the preliminaries. In fact, if any good comes out of this tentative meeting, with its long but imprecise agenda, in the sticky( enervating heat of Washington in July, it will be a most surprising achievement.
The advance signals from spokesmen and officials of the three countries concerned have not been promising. A speech Which Sir Roger Makins delivered on Monday seemed to indicate that the object of the Washington meeting would be to iron out differences of view between the three Govern- ments—an aim which surely cannot be completely achieved by such a meeting. The State Department has been going to considerable lengths to kill in advance any hopes that the • meeting may lead to positive conclusions—hopes which, in view of the apparent inability of the State Department itself to crystallise American foreign policy, could never have been very bright, if they have dawned at all.
So what is the point of holding the meeting at all ? Common sense suggests that there can only be one , point. The object of the meeting " on the highest level " which Sir Winston Churchill originally suggested, was to try to find out what the new rulers of Russia wanted and td persuade them that what- ever that was, they were unlikely to achieve it by tearing humanity to pieces. The object of the meeting at first intended to be held at Bermuda and now more likely to be held in London was to co-ordinate broad British, American and French views before going any further—which meant in effect to discover what subjects could be accepted by all three Western Powers as suitable for immediate negotiation with the Russians and to decide how far President Eisenhower in par- ticular was willing to go with such negotiations. It was never certain that the President would have been willing to give a precise answer to the second question at Bermuda and it is next to impossible that Mr. Dulles can give such an answer in Washington. But he ought by now to be able to deal with the first point—the list of possible subjects for early negotiation. If Lord Salisbury comes back from Washington with such a list his time will not quite have been wasted.
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