LONDON CONFERENCE AND MARSHALL PLAN

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25377, 27 December 1947, Page 6

LONDON CONFERENCE AND MARSHALL PLAN

EUROPE'S RECOVERY

[By WICKHAM STEED]

The final adoption by the United States Congress of the bill to give emergency aid to France, Italy, and Austria should clear the way for consideration of the larger Marshall Plan for the European recovery programme. Upon the acceptance of this programme much more may depend than the hastening or retarding of E “s°P®® n economic recovery. Faith in the survival of representative democratic institutions among the western countries of continental Europe might be seriously weakened by a long delay .on the part of the United States toJulM hopes aroused by General Marshall s vision of all that European recovery must imply for European freedom and for the United States itself. American Critics of Plait—. . It was to be expected that critics or the recovery programme, while refraining from direct attacks upon i » would assail it indirectly by suggestions that the conditions attached to it would not be observed by the European nations. Two of those conditions were that European countries should show a determination to help tnemselves by increased production ana willingness to co-operate with each other. It is unquestionable that Bntain has notably increased her productivity and that the countries of western and continental Europe are following lier example. So the critics, or opponents, of the recovery programme m tne United States have fallen back on tne assertion that the British are reluctant to co-operate in any plan for closer European unity and are unwilling to help in creating a new pattern of economic life for western Europe. This indirect attack upon the Marshall Plan is as ill-founded as was the pretence that the western European nations were not striving to help themselves by increasing their productivity. Britain will give full and hearty support to the proposal for a central agency to represent the nations receiving aid under the Marshall Plan, so that, with a representative of the United States at the head of the agency, there can be no room for doubt whether the conditions of the plan are being fulfilled. Opponents of the plan in the United Stares and elsewhere will have to find another line of attack.

—And Communist Opponents It will be instructive to observe how far this new line of attack, if and when it has been found, will coincide with or reinforce the declared hostility of the Soviet Union to the programme of European recovery, borne very singular phenomena accompanied the abortive Cortference of Foreign Ministers in London. The Communist parties and organisations In France and Italy strove desperately to wreck the economic and social life of these countries and overthrow their governments. Had they succeeded, Mr Molotov in London might have smiled at the prospective disqualification of the French and Italian peoples both for emergency aid from the United States and for help under the European recovery programme. It was, on the contrary, the Communist whom the outbreaks defeated; and he promptly revenged himself by launching against Britain and

the United States also accusations which he rightly supposed would make it impassible for the conference ta continue. Simultaneously his tactics wctw illumined by the publication by “Pravda,” the chief organ of the Russian Communist Party, of a report presented to the first meeting of Cominform on behalf of the party by Mr Malenkov, a prominent member of the famous Politbureau. The report stated that, since all classes antagonistic to Communism have now been liquidated in Russia, the weight of the class struggle has now shifted to the international arena. The report continued: “Here we are faced with two competing systems, Capitalist and Socialist Here our party has to test its weapons in battles with the unscrupulous men of affairs of the bourgeois parties.”

Molotov’s Policy This evidently is how Mr Molotov’s task at the London Conference of Foreign Ministers was understood in the Kremlin. Otherwise this report would hardly have been published authoritatively rii his party organ while the conference was still sitting. He was not seeking agreement on the future of Austria or Germany. He was testing Russian Communist weapons. As General Marshall said, after Mr Molotov had launched his wild, untruthful accusations against Britain and the United States, his charges “are not intended for serious discussion at the conference table; they are designed for another audience and for quite another purpose.” The other audience of which he spoke was plainly the vast audience of the Soviet Union and its satellitas that is served by Moscow radio. This audience was privileged to hear Mr Molotov’s utterances in full together with short selected extracts from the statements of the other Foreign Ministers, so that Mr Molotov’s triumphant vindication of the Soviet standpoint was always self-evident. But Mr Molotov’s ulterior purpose was less plain. It was revealed rather by his conduct than by his words. And his conduct left no room for doubt that Russia regards the recovery of Europe, except under Communist control, as inimical to Soviet interests.

One Possible Good Result This is why Russia will not assent to the recovery of Austria and Germany as free democracies and united economies. So that is the reason for Russian antagonism to the Marshall Plan. For the present, at all events, the Soviet Union appears to have a vested interest in prolonging the European chaos and misery. But if this is Soviet interest, it is definitely not the. interest of western European countries nor the United States.’ Hence the importance both of emergency aid to France, Italy, and Austria, and of the larger European recovery programme. Mr Molotov may indeed have wrought better than he knew at the London conference. He may have opened the eyes of the opponents of the Marshall Plan in the United States or at least have embarrassed them. If so. the supporters of the European recovery programme in the United States and Europe would have some reason to be grateful to him.