Big Game

Last-week Europe's everlasting political chess game was in full swing. The stakes were the maximum: war or peace, national security, the survival of antagonistic ideologies, the preservation of social systems, the strategic control of whole nations and vast regions of the earth--for years to come.

The intent of some of the moves was clear only to such actual players as Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Pope Pius XII. But two situations on the great board were of far-reaching importance: 1) the developing internal crisis of Germany (see below) which might change the course of the whole game and lead to new, startling combinations of power politics; 2) the meeting in Rome of one of Europe's shrewdest chess players (Marshal Tito) and Britain's outstanding political-landscape painter (Winston Churchill). The meeting might be the opening gambit in new plays for power in Italy (see below), in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean.

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