NEWS OF THE WEEK
MR. BYRNES and the American delegates to the United Nations Assembly have this week given a remarkable example of the un- certainties and vagaries of American policy. In Moscow Mr. Byrnes signed an agreement which provided for the setting up of an Atomic Energy Commission, given the delicacy of the subject the agreement was a considerable diplomatic achievement. One of its clauses, however, provided that the Commission should "inquire into all phases of the subject " ; this phrase has apparently caused great uneasiness to certain members of the American delegation, especially the Republican Senator Vandenberg and Mr. John Foster Dulles and their misgivings have caused a considerable reaction in the United States. It is suggested, though Mr. Byrnes asserts that this is not its intention, that the phrase authorises the Commission to inspect American atomic bomb factories and that, this being so, the American delegation would veto the resolution on the Commission which the United States has tabled for the Assembly. In fact, it appears that we are to be spared this farcical situation ; it is difficult not to sympathise with Mr. Byrnes for the perhaps calculated indis- cretions of his colleagues or to suppress the suspicion that they are more concerned with discrediting Mr. Byrnes, and with him the Democratic Administration, than with the dangers they profess to see in the Moscow. Agreement. These alarms are, however, so far a matter purely of American domestic concern, and the British and Russian Governments have rightly taken no official cognisance of
them. What does cause anxiety is that the United States, the most powerfill nation in the world, is so far from having a clear and agreed foreign policy, and art agreed understanding of it, that on the eve of the United Nations Assembly her own delegation cannot present a united front to the world. America's power and influence demand that she shall assume a dominant position in world affairs. So long as her foreign policy is the prey of domestic factions and internal political calculations she cannot give the nations of the world the leadership they expect from her.
