High Up in the Waldorf

In a Waldorf-Astoria suite 37 floors above Manhattan's Park Avenue, the foreign ministers of the three Western powers sat down this week to one of the most crucial conferences since V-J day. The issues before them girdled the globe. But the "major effort," Secretary of State Dean Acheson said as the conference began, centered on Western Europe.

That did not mean that the U.S.'s Acheson, Britain's Bevin or France's Schuman were overlooking Asia, where men were paying with their lives for past blunders --notably the blunders of the U.S. Yet there was no denying that the final issues between East and West were most likely to be resolved where East meets West, in Europe's industrial heartland.

Troops to Europe. In the U.S. Senate last week, Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who has taken over the reins of Republican foreign policy from Michigan's ailing Arthur Vandenberg, put that conviction in specific terms. He urged the U.S. to rush at least ten divisions within a year to bolster Western Europe and to send another ten as soon after as it can. Lodge estimated that Europe needed a minimum of 60 divisions to stop the Red army from advancing to the channel, and that of the 60, the U.S. would have to supply at least a third. President Truman and his Joint Chiefs of Staff had reached a similar conclusion. The day after Lodge's speech, the President announced that he had authorized "substantial increases" in the strength of U.S. forces in Europe. General Mark Clark, chief of U.S. Army field forces, estimated that the reinforcements (reportedly about five divisions to begin with) might begin arriving in Europe within four months.

The decision to reinforce U.S. troops in Europe was part of a far-reaching U.S. command decision (TIME, Sept. 11). Acheson was also authorized to tell his fellow ministers that the U.S. was ready to arm Western Germans (perhaps ten divisions) as part of a unified North Atlantic force, and to appoint a U.S. Supreme Commander to run the show.

Two Years to Go? The U.S. offer was not held out on a silver platter. Britain, France and the rest of the twelve North Atlantic partners would be told that they were expected, for their part, to start implementing paper plans with men and guns. Actually, there was no longer much argument on what had to be done, except for the vital detail of arming Germany (see FOREIGN NEWS). Jolted from its daydreams by Korea, the West had finally begun to take the steps that should have been taken long before.

The real question remained: Had the West awakened too late? Western strategists had to lean on the hope that Russia would not dare to use her military advantage until she had more A-bombs to drop on the U.S. (see BACKGROUND FOR WAR). The strategists, who had understated Russian capabilities before, calculated that the West had approximately two years to finish the job which got under way this week high up in the Waldorf.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.