Evening star., 1953-11-11
The Answer They Deserve

Barring unforeseen QGN6lOpm6ULS OF dCLS OI
God, the thrice-postponed Bermuda Confer
ence-originally scheduled for last July-will be
held next month by President Eisenhower,
British Prime Minister Churchill and French
Premier Laniel Together with their foreign
secretaries-Dule Eden and Bidault-they win
meet for the very good and somewhat urgent
purpose of working out common allied ap-
proach to the questions raised by the Kremlin's
uncompromising attitude toward Western pro-
poSalS for negotiations aimed at easing inter-
national tensions.
This attitude, as set forth in the Novem-
ber Soviet note rejecting the Anglo French
American advocacy of Big Four foreign min
isters' meeting on Germany and Austria has
hardened to point where Russias leaders have
laid down impossible conditions as their price
for agreeing to take part in such a meeting.
The conditions as analyzed by Secretary of
State Dulles, amount to nothing less than a
series of arrogant demands serving notice on
the free world that it must first render itself
defenseless before it can even hope to enjoy the
privilege of comforting or negotiating with
the Kremlin on anything at any time.
For example, the demands would require,
among other things, that the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, the projected European
Defense Community and our interallied Pacific
security pactS be abolished forthwith, along
with American bases overseas. They would also
require that diplomatic recognition and mem
bership in the United Nations be extended i'm
mediately to Red China, and that the Soviet
Union be accepted as neutral" participant
in the yet-to-b be-held Korean political confer
ence. In fact, they would even make it neces-
Sary for France, Britain and the United States
to stop holding meetings like the one to be
staged in Bermuda-on the ground that such
-
Kremlin's best interests.
AS result of these astonishing and totally
unacceptable demands presented with rather
menacing Soviet suggestion that their rejection
will increase the threat of a new world war
there Is good reason to believe that the Malenkov
regime, far from wanting to negotiate for an
abatement of international tensions, has openly
abandoned even the pretenSe of being con-
ciliatory and Is now committed to a policy
indistinguishable from the old Stalinist line of
implacable anti Western hostility. Accord
ingly, when they meet in Bermuda President
Eisenhower, Prime Minister Churchill and Pre-
mier Laniel will have to reckon with the pos
Sibility that the delicate fabric of peace may
suffer grave additional strains in the period
Immediately ahead.
In any event, it seems clear that relations
between the Soviet Union and the West have
gone from Dao 10 worse ana Lnat the cfle1
consequence of the deterioration may be a
potentially explosive intensidcation, of the cold
war. So the forthcoming Bermuda meeting will
be timely and essential get-together to pro-
mote the greatest degree of Anglo-French-
American unity and effort in building up
common security through the NATO alliance,
the EDO and every other enterprise whose
liquidation is sought by the men of the Krem-
lin. That is the only kind of answer they deserve
to their preposterous demand that our world
scrap it's defenses and reduce itself to helpless
ness before their gigantic and aggressive mill
tary machine.