This Is the Peace

Delegates ate "austerity" cakes (without icing), drank sugarless coffee, stared enviously from crowded hotel rooms at the snug Nissen huts in London's parks. The war without parades had produced a peace conference without glamor.

Biggest social event was Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's dreary cocktail party in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords. The most conspicuous guests were the broad-shouldered, anonymous young men clustered around Foreign Commissar Molotov. Their hip pockets bulged. Said a Briton: "Damme! Pistols in the House of Lords. Incredible!"

In its first week the Council of Foreign Ministers achieved two notable agreements: 1) it gave a voice to smaller nations, and 2) it found a basis for settling the fate of Italian colonies.

Australia's hulking, tireless Herbert Vere Evatt led the small and middle nations' fight, as he had at San Francisco. When the Italian treaty came before the Council of Five (for the U.S., Byrnes; for Britain, Bevin; for Russia, Molotov; for France, Bidault; for China, Wang Shih-chieh), Evatt insisted that all the nations that had fought Italy have a say. Russia surprisingly agreed that invitations to speak before the Council be granted to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Russia's friends, Yugoslavia and Poland and the Soviet Republics of the Ukraine and White Russia also were permitted to present their views. Greece's Regent, Archbishop Damaskinos, did not appear before the Council but worked effectively behind the scenes.

The first round of the diplomatic struggle for Mediterranean influence was disposition of the Italian colonies. Jimmy Byrnes came up with a solution: all Italian colonies would be placed under a United Nations trusteeship; after a decade or more some of them might be ready for independence.

This pleased everyone. The Russians, because they would participate in Mediterranean trusteeships; the British, because the U.S. would underwrite the preservation of Britain's Mediterranean lifeline. The U.S. protected its oil interests in the Middle East. Italy, happy at being allowed to present its case to the Council, hoped some day to be appointed the administering power of one or more of its old colonies,

New Pattern. The five Foreign Ministers turned the U.S. colonial formula over to their deputies, with instructions to give due regard to the views of other nations. The deputies will meet continuously until the peace is written. The Foreign Ministers will probably recess next week, meet again in November.

Later--perhaps not for a year or more --there might be a general peace conference to modify or ratify the treaties written under the direction of the Council of Five. But each deal made now affected future settlements; the pattern was being quietly, definitely set in London.

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