THE NATIONS: Too Soon?

Last week's events in Moscow, London and Washington made it plain that the "United Nations" were simply not ready for a world security conference.

Everywhere the climate of opinion abruptly changed: some pessimists even doubted that the conference would open on schedule (April 25) in San Francisco, and the hopes for what it might accomplish steadily lessened. In part, this depression was the result of a belated awakening to the actual, power-political nature of the Dumbarton Oaks scheme for world security. But the news that the Russians were sending a second-rate delegation, that the Big Three had been finagling with the voting rules of the proposed world assembly (see below) was equally discouraging to hardened diplomats and to ordinary people bemused by the rosy propaganda for Dumbarton Oaks.

Sickly Mood. A wider, clearer understanding that the postwar system proposed for the world was in fact a strong-arm system, recognizing and resting on Big Three power, would have been all to the good. But last week's happenings made only for cynicism, doubt, and further misunderstanding.

Typified by Argentina (see LATIN AMERICA), the crowding of belated neutrals and unsavory regimes to San Francisco's door heightened the sickly mood. A New York cartoonist pen-pointed the prevalent mistrust with a Satanic vision of Hitler and Hirohito (see cut), united for the peace and chortling: "You declare war on me, I declare war on you and we both go to San Francisco."

A Russian Is Missing. Moscow announced Russia's San Francisco delegation last week, and it did not include Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov. Washington, London, Paris instantly leaped to the blackest conclusion: Stalin just didn't give a damn.

There were other possible reasons: Molotov already had more than he could do, what with the German problem coming up, the Polish problem unsettled, the known shortage of qualified personnel in the U.S.S.R.'s foreign services. Certainly Stalin did not attach as much importance to the world conference as Churchill and Roosevelt did, or the Marshal would have let nothing stand in the way of Molotov's joining Eden and Stettinius at San Francisco. This week London dispatches reported that Eden might attend briefly, and perhaps not at all. In its mood of international depression last week, Washington uneasily wondered whether Stalin could be right—whether, all other considerations aside, the conference had been called too early and had been vastly oversold.

A workmanlike group, probably not authorized to make binding decisions, will represent Moscow. All but two of the eight delegates were at Dumbarton Oaks; all speak English. Among them:

¶ Ambassador to the U.S. Andrei A. Gromyko, rated as one of Washington's canniest diplomats, heads the delegation.

¶ Tall, slender Semion K. Tsarapkin heads the Foreign Commissariat's Section of American Affairs, was formerly its chief Far Eastern expert.

¶ Round-faced, balding Arkady Sobolev, Minister Counsellor to the Soviet delegation on the European Advisory Commission in London.

¶ Dark, stocky, amiable K. V. Novikov is in charge of British relations, was formerly counsellor of Russia's London Embassy.