THE NATIONS: Positions for May Day

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Britain's David Low last week depicted the Man in the Kremlin looking smugly down from his citadel, watching how the outside world continued building an image of him as an infallible octopus. As usual, Low had a good point. The Man in the Kremlin, looking westward into capitalist paganry, had some things to worry about himself.

Sweetness & Light. Western Europe had vastly strengthened its defenses against Communism, was even taking some practical first steps toward federation. This

May Day, Marxism's annual spring rites would seem slightly out of place in Paris, where the Communists were in lonesome and (temporarily) confused opposition. And in Italy, where Communism had come so close to achieving its greatest triumph since the Russian revolution, May Day saw Communism clearly rebuffed by the Italian people.

But the Man in the Kremlin knew that his Italian defeat was hot irretrievable (see FOREIGN NEWS). Meanwhile there were other directions in which to move and strike. One possibility, of which some Americans became suddenly aware last week, was not to strike at all, but to summon up a spell of sweetness & light.

The Mockery of Munich. Some in the West still have great faith in "sitting down with the Russians and talking things out." They forget that the West tried this for two postwar years, always with the result that Russia broke her promises almost before they were made and gained invaluable strategic positions in the process. Harry Truman last week, for no obvious reason, announced that he was always ready to meet Joe Stalin (in Washington). Newsmen in the U.S. and in Europe speculated that the Kremlin might propose a meeting in, say, Scandinavia. Suppose the Russians did decide to play thus on the world's desperate hopes? From TIME'S Berlin Bureau Chief Emmet Hughes came this assessment last week:

"On the political battlefield of Europe it would be the climactic tactic of the war of nerves—the cunning offer of a salve for the nerves the Communists themselves have shredded. There would be a deep, unreasoning sigh of relief from millions of Europeans. It would rise spontaneously and without reflection and it would be heard happily in the halls of the Kremlin. With rehearsed righteousness, a picture would be drawn of the West appearing before a Communist bar of justice, and if the accused did not agree to a 'reasonable' solution, then the jury would be asked to pronounce the guilt of the West. Europe's hopes of peace, two years ago kidnaped by the Kremlin, would be offered for ransom —cut rate. A special sale, possibly advertised with the promise that the Cominform was selling its whole stock, again going out of business.

"To meet this crisis the West must know and measure this shrewd exploitation of Europe's fears. It can never assume that the Ruhr miner or the Normandy peasant, for all his rude wisdom, will shrug off a Moscow overture as just an empty political move. He will never surrender his worn hope for peace simply because political sophisticates of the Western capitals say that Moscow is just up to its old tricks. The sophisticates will have to expose the tricks. If that is done with clarity and integrity, the West need have no fear. Precisely because the miner's and the peasant's hope for peace is so deep, he does not want it mocked by another Munich."