Background and Results

What made the success at Moscow possible?

London had three answers: 1) good will: the three foreign ministers had made up their minds to understand each other's mutual problems; 2) good sense: they were prepared to discuss any question that anyone wanted to bring up--though not to battle everything through to a final decision; 3) good tactics: Cordell Hull and Anthony Eden pleased the Russians by putting military problems ahead of everything else.

Washington sources added a fourth answer: good preparation. According to this surprising yet circumstantial account, the joint "Four-Power Declaration," embodying the main proposals to win the war and save the peace, had been largely approved before the Moscow meeting began. This came about through delicate long-range discussions which started about the time of the Quebec conference last August and proved to be the turning point in U.S.-Russian relations. The seven-point declaration was said to have been roughed out on the eve of the Quebec talks, accepted by Winston Churchill and later approved by Moscow with four minor changes. The U.S. State Department meanwhile was informed of preparatory talks in London between Anthony Eden and Ambassador Ivan Maisky. As a result, the U.S. delegation at Moscow knew the basic Russian view in advance.

Furthermore, the diplomats and their military colleagues went to Moscow well armed. To convince the Russians that the Allied air offensive was effective, the U.S. and British delegations had elaborate reconnaissance photographs and even motion pictures to show the devastation being inflicted on German plants and communications. One point which impressed the Russians strongly: Germany's relative artillery weakness, exploited brilliantly by Soviet generals in recent battles, was caused mainly by heavy Allied raids on the giant Krupp, Schneider and Skoda gun factories.

Change of Climate. The first tangible result of Moscow was a fundamental change in the diplomatic climate of Europe. Areas of disagreement, acts that previously would have been viewed with suspicion by one or the other of the Great Powers, now seemed to be areas and acts of agreement. For example, Anthony Eden and Turkish Foreign Minister Numan Menemencioglu certainly discussed Turkish neutrality in Cairo last week with the full knowledge and consent of Moscow. Other signs:

> London disclosed that President Eduard Benes of the CzechoSlovak Government in Exile is going to Moscow to sign an alliance with the Soviet Union. Previously, the British and U.S. Governments had discouraged the trip and the treaty.

> Rumors that Finland was about to ask for peace with Russia suddenly recurred in Stockholm. The Swedish press reported that Dr. Juho Kusti Paasikivi, elderly banker and diplomat who took part in the Russo-Finnish peace negotiations of 1940, had been asked to prepare for another trip to Moscow.

> In his victory speech last week, Joseph Stalin included Poland among the countries which are to be liberated and restored to independence. But nothing indicated that Russia proposes to give up the territory taken from eastern Poland in 1939. And it was evident that Stalin, in Moscow's aftermath, expected to preserve his western borders intact, with Finland's Karelia, the Baltic states and Bessarabia incorporated as Soviet territory.

On such touchy matters there probably would be. no public statement by London or Washington until the European war was over, if then. Perhaps Mr. Hull had been told in Moscow that he could not have complete agreement and the Atlantic Charter too.

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