Abroad
Nearly a year after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation it still has to decide how and when the system of separate schools for white and Negro children should be abolished. Some Southern states assert that local prejudice cannot be wiped out by a court ruling and that time is needed for more gradual change; but they seem to have been answered by the fact that integration has been found to work satisfactorily in those states which have adopted the principle.
Sir William Penney and other British and Canadian scientists witnessed the highest nuclear test ever made when an air weapon with atomic warhead was exploded six miles above the Nevada Desert. The weapon is reputedly capable of destroying an entire formation of aircraft within a half-mile radius, but the explosion attracted attention mainly because the resulting cloud was gastro- nomically equated with a doughnut instead of the conventional mushroom. President Eisenhower has signed an agreement author- ising the exchange of some military information on nuclear problems with the NATO powers. After a week of intensive and ingenious advance publicity, the success of the new Falk vaccine for polio was announced at Ann Arbor (Michigan) on Tuesday. The figures reveal that the vaccine is safe, effective and potent; yet authoritative though they appear, they have been received with some scepticism on this side of the Atlantic. `Wonder drugs' have flattered to deceive so often in the past—cortisone is a recent case; and there is also the feeling that polio is an elusive disease that may not prove so amenable in the long run to vaccine treatment as the short-term results suggest.
HONG KONG—Following the loss over the South China Sea of an Indian civil aircraft carrying Chinese delegates to the Afro- Asian conference at Bandoeng, the New China news agency accused Chinese Nationalist and American agents of having sabotaged the aeroplane at Hong Kong. A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry demanded action by the British authori- ties against participants in the plot. The State Department de- scribed the Chinese charge as 'ridiculous.'
JAPAN—The Japanese Foreign Office has announced the rejec- tion of a Soviet proposal for talks about ending the state of war between the two countries, because the Russians would not agree to the Japanese condition that such talks should be held in New York. Mr. Hatoyama, the Prime Minister, had previously stated that he did not think Japan should insist on this condition. The clash of opinions brings into the open the disagreements between himself and his Foreign Minister, Mr. Shigemitsu, as well as the fact that American pressure on the new Japanese Government is becoming increasingly effective. The Hatoyama-must-go move- ment has already made considerable progress inside his own party.
MIDDLE EAST—Imam Ahmed of the Yemen expressed his gratitude for his release from captivity by proclaiming his rescuer —his son Seif el Islam el Badr—heir to the throne (in the Yemen primogeniture is not observed). Ahmed's brothers, who engineered the plot to enforce his abdication, are to be put on trial for treason.
AUSTRIA—Ten years almost to the day after the Red Army `liberated' Vienna, the Austrian Chancellor arrived in Moscow on April 11 for talks with the Russian Foreign Minister on an Austrian treaty. Since all four occupying powers must approve the terms of any treaty, the talks can be no more than exploratory, and will be mainly concerned with the Russian demand for guarantees to ensure the future neutralisation of Austria and pre- vent any possibility of an anschluss between Austria and Western Germany. The latest Russian Note speaks of further delay in an Austrian treaty as 'unjustified' and hopes for a 'speedy con- clusion' of the treaty; yet a year ago the draft treaty (which included the Russian versions of the clauses on which East and West disagreed) was waiting signature. Before leaving Vienna, Herr Raab declared : 'In negotiating for a state treaty, Austrian delegations have covered thousands of miles by air, rail and sea. How much farther we must travel to reach our goal is still un- certain. We are undertaking this trip in the hope of bringing the treaty nearer.' But he knows as well as anyone that if Austria does get her treaty at last, it will only be because it is the next pawn move in the Russian game.
GERMANY—A fortnight ago the West German Defence Minister, Herr Blank, dismissed his chief of military planning, Colonel von Bonin; and the Federal Parliamentary Defence Com- mittee has since begun an investigation of the reasons for his dismissal. On the surface they are plain enough. Von Bonin has• been pressing, in quarters outside the Ministry, his own views on the nafure and role of the future West German defence forces, views which differ fundamentally from those of the Minister him- self. Bad party manners might be allowed to pass, but not a conception of German defence which makes nonsense of the idea of NATO. For Colonel von Bonin wants Western Germany to provide not twelve divisions for General Gruenther's command, but mobile combat groups to defend the inter-zonal frontier in depth, supplemented by a Home Guard and by full Allied sup- port—including the use of atomic weapons—as far forward as possible.
Valery Lysikov, the seventeen-year-old son of a Russian officer stationed in East Berlin, who fled to the West on March 18, later changed his mind and returned to East Berlin in the company of his parents. His reasons for going over to the West he gave as his antagonism to the Soviet dictatorship and his desire to make a new life in the United States; for returning, the fear that his parents would be persecuted as a result of his actions. (He maintained there would be no reprisals against himself if he returned.) West Berlin newspapers are critical of the American authorities for their handling of the business, some maintaining that the US had tried to make political capital out of the youth.
ITALY—Signor Scelba's position as bead of the Italian coalition Government has long been uneasy; and it was furthdr complicated during his absence in America recently by a quarrel between his deputy, the right-wing Socialist Saragat, and the secretariat of his Christian Democratic party. Nenni's left-wing Socialists, tired of the political wilderness they have been sharing with the Communist Party, have been making overtures to the Christian Democrats; and although the Christian Democratic replies have not been effusive, they are sufficiently ambiguous to arouse Saragat's fear that he will be ditched as soon as the two negotia,ors come to terms. The forthcoming Sicilian elections will give an interesting indica- tion of relative party strengths, as the Socialists will not have a joint list with the Communists.
In his Easter message the Pope, apparently quite restored to health, made an appeal for disarmament, in which he urged the statesmen of the world to arrange treaties to 'ensure peace, start progressive disarmament, and thus spare humanity from the destruction of a new war.' He also exhorted nuclear scientists to persevere bravely and confidently with their research which, he assured them, he watches 'without fear or trepidation.' Roman Catholic newspapers the world over concentrated on the disarm- ament appeal; the Associated Press, however, preferred to find significance in the fact that 'the Pope's words seemed to echo the spirit and theme of President Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" declarations.'
FRANCE—Franco-Tunisian negotiations reopened in Paris in the middle of last week. Among the points still to be settled are French representation on Tunisian municipal councils and the degree of French control to be exercised over the economic affairs of the Protectorate. There has also been an attempt on the part of the trench to reopen the questions (previously settled) of the status of the French language and the nationality of the President of the court of arbitration which is to be set up. Some French circles are trying to obtain a formal declaration in any agreement of the indissoluble unity of France and Tunisia, and it is possible ' that this may create serious difficulties in the negotiations.
A commission has been set up by General Koenig, French Defence Minister, to inquire into the causes of the defeat of Dien Bien Phu last May. The President of the Commission is General Catroux, who was the first army officer senior to General de Gaulle to join him, and the members include various non-political figures. The terms of reference of the Commission include the determination of the responsibility of the various French govern- ments since the war—a safe way to ensure that its deliberations will throw no fresh light on the matter.
M. Faure announced that France would not make either the hydrogen or the atomic bomb, but would develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes.
Vine-growers in the department of Hdrault in Southern France are blocking the roads in protest against the low price of wine. The mayors of the department have offered their collective resignation and threaten to close the town halls in order to disrupt the local elections. The troubles in this department, whose agriculture is almost entirely devoted to the vine, are due fundamentally to over- production of wine in Metropolitan France and to the competition offered to producers of yin ordinaire by cheap Algerian red wine.
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