Talking It Over

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 465, 21 May 1948, Page 5

Talking It Over

HE news that Russia and the United States are going to sit down together and talk things ever is, as we write this note, an annouricement and nothing further. It is not announced yet when they are going to meet, or where, and ‘even if we knew that we would not know how big the hope is on one side or the other that they will part better friends. It ought to be good that they are to meet at all, but there is at least a possibility that it is not. If they are meeting with a sincere desire for better relations, and a reasonable hope that these are. possible, it is the best news we have had for many weeks. If the meeting was asked for, and accepted, not in the belief that it would bring harmony, but in the hope on each side that it ‘would place the responsibility for a break-down on the other side, there is no reason at all to rejoice, and much reason for foreboding and gloom. There is of course no justification for accepting the worst of these two possiblities and refusing even to consider the best. No one believes that either Russia or the United States wants war: what each wants is to win a war if it comes: andj that leaves the possibility at least that a conference which begins in black suspicion may end in suspicion less profound. It could in fact end in something. like confidence (as that commodity goes in power politics), and it would be foolish in the meantime to nurse our fears to keep them warm., But it would be catastrophically more foolish to whoop with delight already over a miracle that has not yet come, and if anybody feels disposed to do that it will perhaps sober him a little to read. another cable in the same issue. of his newspaper reporting Moscow’s ‘method of celebrating VE-day. (It has since been announced that the meeting will not take place.--Ed.)