NEWS OF THE WEEK F the year 1947 sees the
conclusion of a definite treaty with our I major ex-enemy, Germany, and, incidentally, but most important, with our only technical ex-enemy, Austria, it will establish a very considerable advantage over 1946 in the field of international rela- tions. The task will engage the Foreign Ministers at their meeting in Moscow in March, and the appointment of deputies to work on the drafts of treaties already prepared by the British Foreign Office and the American State Department give ground for hoping that ,delays will be minimised and a sound foundation for success at Moscow laid. No one need suppose that the success will be easily attained. Among the Foreign Ministers themselves perfectly genuine differences of opinion exist, and they will have to be hammered out. A problem so dominantly important as the future of Germany cannot be settled on the basis of any unreal compromise. There is, moreover, the vital question of what signatories to a treaty are avail- able on the German side. However desirable a federal Germany may be for many purposes there must clearly be a Central Government for some, chief among them the signature of a treaty with the Allies. That must clearly be left for the moment ; it may be a good deal after March before the Allies have the treaty ready. Meanwhile two measures in regard to Germany, complete disarmament and economic restoration, remain paramount. The first is the subject of the drastic and comprehensive order which the Allied Central Council has just issued, prohibiting the manufacture, import and possession of all war materials of any kind whatever ; it will be necessary that enforce- ment here should be as rigorous as the order itself. Economic restoration is so far a practical matter mainly in the British-American Zone, where plans have been formed and published for a steady in- crease in expotts to produce a balance between imports and exports by 1949. Everything, no doubt, will depend on coal, and here there are small but encouraging increases to report. Much depends equally on how far, and when, Russia and France are prepared to associate themselves with the unification which Britain and America have begun. It is only along these lines that the rehabilitation of Europe can be achieved.
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