Freedom on the Danube

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24912, 27 June 1946, Page 4

Freedom on the Danube

Hungary’s Prime Minister, Mr Nagy,

has told newspaper correspondents in Paris that he favours freedom of commerce on the Danube. In Budapest, his deputy, Mr Szakasits, has also spoken of-freedom of commerce on the Danube. It would be an over-optimistic reader, however, who supposed that Mr Nagy, a Conservative, and Mr Szakasits, a Communist, were talking about the same thing. Mr Nagy’s meaning is clear beyond doubt. He favours freedom of commerce between Hungary and “ all the Allied nations ”, and the freedom of navigation on the Danube that is implied. His deputy’s meaning is perhaps not so clear. But the context in which his remark appeared—the announcement of plans

for a Soviet-sponsored conference of the Danubian States—leaves very little, if any, doubt that the freedom of passage on the Danube' of which he spoke is a freedom to be enjoyed only by the Danubian countries and by Russia. And if, indeed, a doubt should remain, it is removed by the prolonged failure of the Big Four’s Foreign Ministers to reach an agreement on the internationalisation of Europe’s waterways, the Danube among them. Such an agreement was sought, at Potsdam, by President Truman. In his speech on the results of the conference, he said:

One of the persistent causes for wars in Europe in the last two centuries has keen the selfish control of the waterways of Europe. I mean the Danube, the Black Sea Straits, the Rhine, the Kiel Canal, and all the inland waterways of Europe which border on two or more States. The United States proposed at Berlin that there be free and unrestricted navigation of these inland waterways.

The American proposal provided for the establishment of international agencies of control which would include the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Unibn, and France, as well as the States which border on the particular waterways. It is still nothing more than a proposal When President Truman announced it, and spoke also of his intention to press it before the Council of Ministers, the “ Economist ”, for one, thought him unlikely to succeed. It was then apparent that Russian policy was concentrating its efforts on securing more or less exclusive control over the estuary of the Danube. International control would, as the “ Economist ” said, “ undo much of that effort ”, In the nine months since then, Moscow has not relaxed its effort; and to-day the Soviet exercises practically com-

plete economic influence in the Danubian countries. However selfish and provocative the control imposed on the Danube before .the war, it

was not the domination of one Power. The European Commission of the Danube, called (into being in 1856 by the Treaty of Paris, consisted until 1914 of eight delegates, representing Austria - Hungary, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Rumania, Russia, and Turkey. The 1921 Convention of the Danube reduced its membership. But it remained representative of Britain, France, Italy, and Rumania; and in "March, 1939, it gave Germany a voice again.