Evening star., 1946-09-08

failure. 1t is not too early to say that
what has happened so far fails to give
any assurance that good rather than
evil will have come out of the Luxem-
bourg Palace when the last word has
been spoken.
True, the conference itself probably
has not made-probably will not make
any decisions which increase the likeli-
hood of another war. What it has
done-what it is likely to continue to
dds to show the world, in a way which
could not possibly be misunderstood
how unsubstantial and unhealthy a
thing is the peace which it has won.
The bridges had already been crossed
the decisions made and the pattern set
by the time these men came here. 1t
remained only for the conference to
show what ghastly mess that pattern
was. Long before July %. when the
conference opened, wartime under
standing between Soviet Russia and the
western world had cracked wide open
under the imperialstic hammer blows
1t received from both sides in the clash
between two opposing ways of life. 1t
remained only for the conference to
show, by providing medium for hour
after hour of bitter public debate, that
the chasm was so wide and deep that it
might well engulf the whole world
An Agonizing Experience.
Possibly this Is the good which will
emerge from the tumult and shouting at
the Luxembourg Palace: That it will
have let the world know, more clearly
than it knew before, what sort of stu
alton it Is up against. But there may
be evil, too. The kind of words which
are being flung back and forth across
the conference tables here seem bound
to widen further the gulf which already
divides us into two hostile camps.
Watching this business is an agoniz-
Ing experience. Paris today is no place
for idealiSts. 1t used to be fashionable
the Versailles treaty after the first
World War on the ground that they
were hopelessly idealistic. Certainly
the history books will never direct that
criticism at the men who are at work
here. Small nations occasionally have
fling at the idealistic approach, but
the people who count in this peace
making" job have no truck at all with
such nonsense except as it serves as
propaganda ammunition for their
speechmaking.
The harder one looks at the confer
ence, the more one sees that it is a
cynical-almost braZen-contest in power
politics, and practically nothing else.
So here are the great powers" deter
mined to run the world, operating al
most without apology a machine they
have constructed which insures that no
voice-no blending of voices-shall be
able to speak decisively except theirs
And here We see them demonstrating
only one thing as they run that ma
chine: Their utter inability to get along
together, to achieve among themselves
even the most elementary sort of agree
ment as to how they will run it, They
can agree only that nobody else is going
to take a hand.
Depression Is Evident.
That, think, is the real reason for
the depression which you can almost
feel in the air around the Luxembourg
Palace. To have it laid graphically be-
fore you that the worlds fate is COM
pletely In the hands of two or three
great powers is bad enough. To have
it laid before you, at the same time,
that those great powers cannot work
together on solution of the worlds
problems-this Is excruciating. And
apparently they cannot. No one watch
ing this can fail to see that instead of
cooperating in a genuine effort for
the building of world peace, the great
powers, which control everything, are
merely working at cross purposes in an
attempt to force favorable solutions to
their own individual problems. They
seem to be engaged in a grotesque Jug
Cling match in which they take the
worlds composite fate, break it into
pieces, and then hurl the pieces at one
another like brickbats across the con-
ference table. 1t will be bad day for
everybody when the pieces start to fall.
Situation Is Scrambled.
Perhaps it was natural that the great
powers at this conference should de-
vote themselves to the pursuit of what
they conceive to be their own particular
Interests rather than to a genuine con-
certed attempt to fashion a structure of
peace with justice for Europe as whole.
But the tendency to think of peace
settlement only in terms of geopolitical
maneuvering by the great powers has
been carried to fantastic lengths, and
some of the results are extraordinary.
One result, for instance, is that it is
virtually impossible today to distinguish
between the former enemy states and
allies, the judges and the judged, at
the conference. A small state which, as
presently constituted, is useful pawn
to particular great power appears here
as the friend and ally of that great
power, regardless of which side it hap
pens to have fought on in the recent
war. Conversely, that small state as
like as not automatically becomes the
object of bitter attack by another great
power which is at odds with the great
power to which the small one is useful
1t does not seem likely that what hap
pens to state in this position will bear
any necessary relation either to its just
desserts or to its logical position as one
part OF an overall peace structure
Let us consider one example-there
are plenty of them on both sides of the
fence. Greece has been in the news of