INTERNATIONAL: The Mold of History

This week the Secretary of State of the U.S. and the Foreign Minister of Great Britain are about to do business with Moscow. Cordell Hull, an honest, sincere and limited man from Tennessee, and Anthony Eden, a middle-class patrician from Britain, will go into conference with Viacheslav Molotov, a Russian revolutionary and politician who speaks for and only by permission of the toughest ruler in the modern world.

There are limits to what these men can actually accomplish. This conference is a preliminary: the positive accomplishments must be left to Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, when & if they meet. But there is no limit to what Hull, Eden and Molotov can fail to accomplish. If they do fail—and they may —their failure will be reflected in the fires of World War II, and in that war's aftermath. If they succeed, Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin will then have their historic chance to make World War II a victory for all the Allies, a prelude to a livable world for all men.

Lines of Force. Probably no aspect of the war has been the subject of as much talk, gossip, punditry, newspaper footage and parlor statesmanship as "What Will Russia Do?" Actually, Russia's basic policy is not ambiguous or mysterious: it is merely alternative. Russia is in a position to choose: 1) full collaboration with the U.S. and Great Britain if they meet her demands; or 2) a lone-wolf course, excluding the U.S.'and Britain, but including an arrangement for and with a pro-Russian Germany. The problems are not simple. Among the many specific lines of force swirling about the conference are these:

1) The U.S. and Britain apparently want Russia to share with them some sort of "joint responsibility for Europe," rather than divide Europe into exclusive "spheres of influence." The difficulty is that neither Roosevelt nor Churchill has enunciated concrete proposals for the reconstitution of Europe. Without such proposals, their Ministers will be unable to make much sense on "joint responsibility."

2) In contrast, Joseph Stalin has some extremely precise notions as to his need not only for "spheres of influence" but for actual domination of the Baltic States, much of prewar Poland and Rumania.

3) Russia is not at war with Japan. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. suggested last week that 1,000,000 American soldiers' lives would be saved if Russia let the U.S. into Siberia now. Militarily, the Senator may have been wrong, but his point cast a great shadow before it: will Russia be with or against the U.S. in the postwar Pacific? More particularly, will Russia want to come in against Japan and then seek to dominate northern Asia in opposition to the U.S. and China? This probably was not an immediate question, but half the world could not be left wholly out of the equation this week.

4) Britons' concern with Europe and Soviet policy begins with the simple fact that their home is an island off the continent of Europe. But Britain also speaks for an Empire. There is, therefore, an historic, although not necessarily a dangerous, conflict between the landmass empire of Russia and the globe-girdling, sea-&-air-knit Empire of Britain. In the Middle East the land-empire and the sea-empire meet—and where they meet, there may always be friction.