Readjustment After Moscow
One fact which becomes plainer and plainer about the Moscow Conference, as the air is cleared of disappointment and accumulated press comment and Foreign Ministers' desks are cleared of official reports and assessments, is the paradox that its negative results are becoming a positive factor in international relations. The tendency to assume that the meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers will end in agreement has now been practically killed by the steady Russian refusal to compromise. Speeches in the past week have tended to show that slowly but certainly the Great Powers are maturing independent policies, whose mutual adjustment will have to be negotiated rather than assumed. It is true that Mr. Bevin said that the November meeting would be the most important of all, but since he has no reason whatever to expect that the Russians will change their tune, he can only have meant by that that the November meeting may well be the last, whether a settlement is reached or not. M. Bidault was very cautious indeed in his Press conference at the end of last week, but he did say that Britain and America showed understanding of what France wanted in Germany, and since then French opinion has noted quietly but with due appre- ciation the passage in Mr. Bevin's speech which referred to the essential ties binding the two countries in all circumstances. From America comment has been sparse, but Mr. Marshall's grim silence has been accompanied by unmistakable signs that Ainerican economic strength is being -assessed for deployment in support of American political policy. New indications of an independent policy in Moscow are not needed, since they have been there all the time. This is the situation to which, two years after the end of the war in Europe, the peoples of the world must now accustom themselves. By a miracle the November meeting in London may close the division among the Great Powers which first became apparent, also in
London, in the autumn of 1945. In any case, the machinery of the United Nations remains, and somehow or other the settlement of Germany must be accomplished. But everybody can now see that, failing a complete change in Russian policy and tactics, the days of the Council of Foreign Ministers are numbered.
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