BELGRADE AND BERLIN.
RUSSIA, it may safely be assumed, had no wish to find herself engaged, as she is engaged, on two fronts at once ; the military metaphor is inevitable, but fortunately it need not be taken literally at present. In her conduct in Berlin and in her conduct towards Yugoslavia there is one fundamental similarity.
Rash and provocative action was taken, in the hope that those against whom it was directed would give way. That has happened so far in neither case. It will not happen at all at Berlin, as the British Foreign Secretary, with the full support of the House of Commons, made unmistakably clear on Wednesday. The eyes of all Western Europe are on Britain, America and France ; on their action at Berlin Western unity depends. Of the quarrel between Moscow and Belgrade too little is known yet to justify any confident assessment of the situation, but it is clear that Russia has begun by a false move, and it remains to be seen whether she can retrieve it. The manifesto expelling the Com- munist Party in Yugoslavia, which in effect means Yugoslavia as a State, from the Cominform is a fantastic, not to say a comic- opera, document, in which it is hard to disentangle from the mass of turgid verbiage the real causes of the Kremlin's indignation. The head and front of Yugoslavia's offending is that the Govern- ment has not nationalised the land and collectivised the peasants.
(In that connection the description of a typical Yugoslav farm in last week's Spectator has special relevance.) But the whole docu- ment might have been framed by someone under the influence of vodka. When the dismissal of the Yugoslav Ministers Zhujorich and Hebrang, who were got rid of because they were too far to the Right, is ascribed to their criticism of " the anti-Soviet•concepts of the Yugoslav Communist Party," the attempt to make sense of the whole affair is best abandoned.
But this at least does emerge: Tito, who has a well-developed sense of his own importance, is less ready than the heads of some other south-eastern European States to take orders in all things from Moscow. It is necessary therefore to bring him to heel, and a sentence of excommunication is issued. But Papal bulls do not always intimidate as they should, and the Yugoslav Communist Party for the looked-for submission substitutes a quite unlooked- for defiance. That is the only conclusion that can safely be reached on the facts so far published. But it is a fairly substantial conclusion. It demonstrates that Russia's Eastern European bloc is distinctly less cohesive than it seemed ; that the Cominform, so far from being a mere. co-operative institution for the dis- semination of propaganda, is a subservient instrument of Soviet policy ; and that any semblance of national independence is _ anathema to the Kremlin. What are the possibilities now ? The question in regard to Belgrade, as in regard to Berlin, is whether Russia, having gone so far, can afford to accept a rebuff. She obviously expected the Yugoslav Communists to come to heel at her fiat. That may still happen. Alternatively, Russian troops may move in, to settle by force what could not be achieved by menace. All that is matter of speculation. What is much more definite is the effect that even what has so far happened will have throughout Europe. Communist parties everywhere, depressed no doubt in any case by the termination of the London dock strike, are manifestly discomfited by signs of fissure in the bloc of Com- munist governments ; while the large minorities, in some cases actual majorities, which Russian domination ceaselessly galls, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, find a satisfaction which it would be perilous to express. Further developments must be awaited before more can be said. The effects of a change of Yugoslav policy might have important effects at Trieste, in Greece, throughout the Balkans. But to assume such a change at the moment is not warranted. In regard to Berlin there is no lack of hard facts—most of them much too hard to be agreeable. Here the technique is the same, but much further developed and proportionately more dangerous, for here it is a question not of words but of acts. The intention— to drive the three Western Powers from Berlin—has been plain for months. How far Russia is prepared to go in execution of that intention she herself has probably not decided. All the indications suggest that she is not deliberately contemplating war, but the danger of her actions precipitating a clash at any moment is un- deniably grave. As to the rights and the wrongs of the present situation, there is no room for a shadow of doubt. The case which the Foreign Secretary quietly and patiently built up in the House of Commons on Wednesday is unanswerable. There is no single point in the contest between Russia and the Western Powers in which she has been in the right and they in the wrong. She has made common action in Germany impossible by violating that basic article in the Potsdam agreement which provided that the country should be treated as a single economic unit, as well as that other which laid it down that current production should be used in the first instance to pay for necessary imports, not for repara- tions. According to Mr. Bevin, Russia has annexed from her own zone property and material to the value of no less than 7,000,000,000 dollars. As for the position of the Western Powers in Berlin, their responsibility for feeding the population in their sectors, the provision for unimpeded transit to Berlin by rail, road, air and water—all that is set out with perfect clarity in documents signed by the Russians at different dates in 1944, 1945 and 1946 after discussions in which full agreement was reached. In everything we are doing in Berlin we have right on our side. In everything Russia is doing she is incontestably in the wrong.
Why has Russia chosen this moment to proceed to extreme measures ? One reason, no doubt, is that she thought the cur- rency reform in the Western zones (adopted because an agreement with Russia for an all-German currency proved impossible) gave her some colour of an excuse. Another may be the common nee for adventures abroad to distract attention from difficulties of different kinds at home. A third may well be that the Marshall Aid plan, which Russia has always bitterly opposed because she realised how completely its success would frustrate her political ambitions, comes into operation next week. However that may be, she has proceeded to extreme measures—so extreme that one step further might well involve war. In that situation what can the Western Powers do ? None of them has any doubt. In their resolution they are completely united. They will not leave Berlin. They are there in full right. They have deep obligations to the Germans in their sectors, to whose steadfastness in the face of menace and stress General Robertson paid so warm and merited a tribute at Hamburg on Monday. We must stand by them. We must do our utmost to guarantee their food supplies, and Mr. Eden may be right in suggesting that organised air transport can go further towards meeting the need than has commonly been believed. At all events everything possible will be attempted.
But such conditions cannot continue long. Marshal Sokolovsky's letter to General Robertson, suggesting that rail transport might be resumed reasonably soon is not to be dismissed as mere verbiage, but such words mean nothing till they are vindicated by deeds. The Russians may have genuinely believed that they could gain their ends by intimidation. After Wednes- day's debate they can retain no illusions about that. They know, moreover, that there is nothing that their satellites dread so much as another war. They have involved themselves in a quarrel, the issue of which cannot be predicted, with the most powerful south-. eastern European State. In such circumstances a constructive agreement with Marshal Stalin may yet be possible. Russia has everything to gain by it, and the Western Powers are as ready for it as they ever were. It was satisfactory to learn from Mr. Bevin that a direct approach to Moscow is contemplated. That is plainly the right course. No local quarrels, but fundamental issues of European policy, are involved. It is only in discussions between Governments, not between military commanders, that solutions can be found; The four Foreign Ministers should get together and make another endeavour. Meanwhile the Western Allies must stand firm in Berlin. In the words of a great German, they can no other.
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