MR. BEVIN AND MOSCOW
THE Foreign Secretary has set out on a fateful journey. The Moscow Conference must affect the destiny of nations, and of European nations in particular, decisively for good or ill. If it achieves reasonable success a new impulse will be given to the integration of the world and material conditions throughout the continent be put in the way of continuing improvement. If it fails recovery everywhere will be retarded, new anxieties created, the path to a reduction of armaments blocked, the menace of the atomic bomb substantially increased. The Conference may take either of these courses. It is tragic that there should be any doubt about which it will take, for there is on the face of it no reason why the four participant Powers should disagree, if their minds are concentrated disinterestedly on the solution of the problems they have to face, and agreement on almost any solution would be better than failure to agree. Failure there may be, but it need- not be anticipated at this stage. Alignments at such conferences in the past have followed a familiar pattern, and followed it so regularly as to discourage any high hopes that the Moscow conversations may adopt a new design. But in fact Russia has for some time given evidence of being less nee-co-operative than she was. Agree- ment was in the end reached on the five lesser European treaties and they have all of them been duly signed. Marshal_Stalin's influence on the conversations may be more emollient than M. Molotov's. And if (which is not yet known) Mr. Bevin is able to accept most or all the Russian proposals for the amendment of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty the wider conversations will be given an auspicious start.
The possibilities of the Conference, of course, are limited. The Foreign Secretary specifically warned the House of Commons not to expect too much from it. There is no prospect of a German Treaty taking shape. That is not even being attempted. Germany is a long-term problem. The Allied occupation will last for many years yet, and no treaty could be of value till there was a stable German Government to conclude it with. Of that there is no real sign yet, nor can there be till the Allies have decided what form a German Government is to take, Whether centralised or in a large degree federal. Russia, paradoxically enough, while refusing to give effect to that article of the Potsdam agreement which laid it down that Germany should be treated as a single economic unit, stands firmly for a single central government such as Hitler developed. Britain and France lean much more towards a federal solution, and America, with her own experience of federalism in action, will certainly range herself with them. No final decision on this need be taken at Moscow. Before it is taken, indeed, some weight must be given to the views of the German people, who are not yet concerning themselves sufficiently with politics to have come to any clear conclusion on the question at all. That, there- fore, can be postponed. What cannot be postponed is an agreement on the administration of Germany in the years immediately ahead. Drastic changes in the existing arrangements are called for, and the real test of the Conference will be its success in the endeavour to revise them.
Here there is at least one hopeful factor. The Allied Control Council at Berlin is sending to Moscow a report on the con- dition of Germany, with, it is to be assumed, recommendations for the future, and the report is unanimous. Its contents are not yet known, but it is impossible that it should advocate the perpetua- tion of the present quadripartite system of administration. The Potsdam agreement of August, 1945, which has been unduly maligned (what is wrong, of course, is that it has never been carried out) said it down specifically that " during the period of occupation Germany shall be treated as a single economic unit " and that ,common policies should be established in regard to import and export programmes for Germany as a whole. It is as imperative as ever that that policy should be applied. Russia's refusal to apply it pronipted, and indeed necessitated, the economic fusion of the British and American zones of Germany, with results which bear the promise of fruit rather than immediate fruit. There is no political fusion. Particular care has been taken to avoid that, since it would lead inevitably to a partition between east and west disastrous not only to Germany but to all Europe. If the unity of Germany can be restored the unity of Europe may remain. If Germany is to be divided the danger of the creation of eastern and western blocs in Europe is imminent. In Germany severance is utterly unnatural, with the main food-producing areas in Russian hands and the main industrial areas in Anglo-American, and neither of them making its contribution to the needs of the other. Some slight relaxation, indeed, there has been. A little food has come west from the Russian zone, a few manufactured goods gone east from the Anglo-American. One of the chief tasks before Mr. Bevin and General Marshall is to achieve agreements which will convert that trickle into a stream and the stream into a river till the Potsdam principle of the economic unity of Germany gets practical recognition at last.
Here, and in the matter of reparations, regarding which Russia is putting her demands high and insisting that they be satisfied in part from current German production, the whole of which at this stage is needed for home consumption and for export in exchange for imports, progress towards agreement may be slow. Meanwhile the arrangements in the Anglo-American zone, which contains something like two-thirds of the population of Germany, must go forward. At last the complete hopelessness under which the Germans have lain crushed is beginning to lift a little. Coal pro- duction in the Ruhr is improving substantially—Mr, Bevin last week spoke of a rise from 170,000 tons to 230,000 tons daily— which will have an immediate effect on transport and industry generally. At the same time external trade on a normal basis is beginning, though on a scale necessarily limited by Germany's lack of raw materials. The future of all this will rest with Moscow. On such questions as the complete demilitarisation of Germany there can be no room. for serious disagreement, and the revised Anglo-Soviet Treaty, the Anglo-French Treaty signed on Tuesday, and the projected Four-Power Treaty, if it materialises, will all provide fresh assurances against the danger of German aggression. Denazification is more contentious, and the recent round-up of suspects in the Anglo-American zone shows how imperative con- stant vigilance is. Russia is critical of alleged laxity in the west ; what she is doing in her own zone is, like so much else there, unknown. So far as the British zone is concerned it is high time the process was brought to an end.
But dominant in importance though the German question is, it is by no means the only item on the Foreign Ministers' programme. There will be ground for the deepest disappointment if the Austrian Treaty is not finally prepared for signature. Austria is in a com- pletely different category from the other ex-enemy States. She was Hitler's first victim, and she was dragged or driven into war by him. She has equipped herself with a genuinely democratic government which shows every sign of a capacity for survival. The restoration of Austrian independence under such a regime would pave the way for the country's entry into the United Nations, would (have a salutary effect on the politics of some adjacent countries and would enable both troops of occupation and troops on lines of communication to be withdrawn. The Treaty exists in draft form, and in spite of certain differences of opinion—again concerning reparations—there is every reason to hope it will be definitely approved. But over and above such specific business Moscow provides the opportunity for a consolidation of relations between the four Great Powers both individually and as the prin- cipal members of the United Nations. In view of all the circum- stances it may well be that that can be effected more successfully in the Russian capital than elsewhere. In this a great respongibility rests on Mr. Bevin. Relations between America and Russia are notoriously strained, and the blame lies by no means wholly on one side. If the British Foreign Secretary mingles skill with discretion, as he is perfectly capable of doing, he may be able by conciliatory statesmanship to dispel mutual suspicions that are doing much to destroy " the good relations between nations on which peace depends." Nothing more valuable than that could emerge from the Moscow discussions, but it may be hoped that both this and much else will emerge.
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