AMERICAN ATTITUDES
Iis hard to understand the present American 'attitude towards relations between the West and the Soviet Union. Presumably, the State Depart- ment, the White House and the man in Main Street are all agreed in wanting a settlement with the Russians 'that will make peace possible, and for a reasonably long time ahead. To this end, it is important that the present Foreign Ministers' conference at Geneva should be successful enough to make a summit conference worth while. It may well be the case, as our Geneva correspon- dent suggests on another page, that Mr. Herter's apparent toughness there is part of an elaborate act, and that he only goes through the motions, for the sake of not looking a cissy in American eyes, of being put out by Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's attempts to come to terms with Mr. Gromyko. But it would be a great pity if Mr. Herter's histrionic abilities were to prove so effective as to convince the Russians at Geneva as well as the Americans at home. Seeing that everybody knows that nothing will be finally settled by the Foreign Ministers, it seems unnecessary for Mr. Herter to threaten the Russians, as he is said to have done, that the United States will not go to the summit if there is pressure over Berlin.• It is only at the summit that the West can really put an end to pressures of that sort.
What is even more disquieting is the resentment expressed in the New York Herald Tribune (in Joseph Alsop's commentary) at the establishment in East Germany of an office of the Federation of British Industries. Is a peaceful settlement with the Iron Curtain countries helped or hindered by doing business with them? One has only to ask the question to answer it, yet the belief is naturally now held that it is American pressure that is responsible for our refusal to grant long-term credits to the Russians—and for the heavy weather that Sir David Eccles's mission is meeting in Moscow, as a result.
Other American journalists in Geneva have been reporting that their delegates are disturbed by British attitudes. Drew Middleton, the experi- enced correspondent of the New York Times, writes that 'diplomats and officials have been talk- ing about Britain's supposed willingness to make a deal with the Soviet Union over Germany and the trend in Britain towards increased trade with Russia at the expense of Western solidarity.' If a trading nation's readiness to trade has to be at the expense of Western solidarity, it must be a pretty feeble solidarity; and if it is improper to be willing to make a deal with the Soviet Union over Germany. then what are we doing at Geneva? What, come to that, is diplomacy sup- posed to be about?
Typical of the current American attitude is another charge against Britain in Joseph Alsop's Herald Tribune article: that Reuters have estab- lished an office in East Berlin. To object to this is to carry holier-than-thoumanship to the point of idiocy. It is proper for a democracy to dis- approve of Communist systems; it is understand- able, if frequently unwise, for it not to want to do business with them; it is almost suicidally stupid to deny itself news of what they are up to. This is the sort of blinkered pigheadedness applied to the Soviet Union and its satellites that has done so much harm when applied to China. To be allowed to go to China, an American reporter has to apply for special permission to the State Department (Mr. Averil Harriman, who has been in Moscow for an American news agency, is waiting cap in hand at the moment). But China will not admit any of the few that have been given permission, because the State Department refuses permission for any Chinese journalist to enter the United States. Do the Americans really want a similar state of affairs to obtain between Britain and East Germany, in particular, or between both sides of the Iron Curtain in general? It gives no help to the negotiators at Geneva, or to those who will meet at the summit, for the correspon- dents of American newspapers—known to be well briefed by the State Department's contingent at Geneva—to give the impression that they do.
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