Yalta at Work

The great adventure in Big Three cooperation had begun. In Poland and Rumania last week, the Big Three set out to square Russian aims with those of Britain and the U.S., make the Yalta agreements work in Moscow's part of Europe.

Watch on Bucharest. With no waste of time, the U.S. and Britain let Moscow know that they disliked the smell of the Government set up in Bucharest last fortnight by the Kremlin's fixer, Andrei Januari Vishinsky (TIME, March 12).

Faced with a hastily accomplished fact, Washington and London did not demand the immediate resignations of non-Communist Premier Peter Groza and his "National Front" Cabinet. Instead, the tests of Yalta were: 1) the Groza Government's future behavior; 2) the Kremlin's immediate willingness to talk things over with the U.S. and Britain. And the Kremlin was willing.

The fact that the talks were still going on this week represented a considerable gain. For Andrei Vishinsky, the mild-mannered, tough-minded Soviet Vice Commissar of Foreign Affairs, had previously played a lone hand in Bucharest, ignoring the Allied Commission and dealing directly with young King Mihai. Perhaps Joseph Stalin needed time to bring his bureaucracy into line with the Yalta doctrine, just as Franklin Roosevelt had needed time to bring his abstentionist State Department into line with the new U.S. policy of responsibility in Europe.

At week's end, Stalin himself gave the Groza Government a potent shot in the arm. He announced that "the Soviet Government has decided to satisfy the petition of the Rumanian Government" and let the Rumanians take over Transylvania, which Hitler gave to Hungary in 1940.

This maneuver had been arranged with great speed. The new Government made its "request" March 8; Stalin granted it on March 10 in an extraordinary, personal letter to Premier Groza and his Foreign Minister, a non-Communist politician named George Tatarescu. But the return of Transylvania to Rumania was an Allied policy, actively supported by Britain and agreed to by the U.S. when the Big Three signed the Rumanian armistice last September. In his letter of blessing, Stalin took pains to base his decision on the Allied precedent. He may well have had an eye cocked at London and Washington when he reminded the Groza Government of its duty to safeguard Transylvania's Hungarian and other minorities.

Watch on Warsaw. In Moscow, the trustees of Poland's fate and of the battered Allied conscience also got down to business.

The Big Three committee appointed at Yalta -- U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, Soviet Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov -- failed to agree in , its first three meetings. But the talks continued: after Yalta, Moscow was in no mood to brush off the U.S. and Britain.

Able, experienced Sir Archibald carried the ball for both London and Washington.

Aware that somewhat vacuous Ambassador Harriman needed all the help he could get, the State Department reinforced him with its No. 1 expert on Poland, chubby Elbridge Durbrow, who left Washington for Moscow last fortnight. Young (41), capable Mr. Durbrow is no diplomatic giant, but he knows Poland and he understands the Russians.

At the start, the negotiators discovered that the Yalta agreement to broaden the Warsaw Government meant one thing to Molotov, another to Clark Kerr and Harriman. The Commissar insisted that the agreement required just a few changes in the Government, all subject to veto by the present Warsaw Poles. The U.S. and British Ambassadors would have none of this. They insisted on a complete over haul, keeping elements of the present Gov ernment as a nucleus but also including Poland's non-Communist parties on an equal basis. From these extremes, the negotiators labored toward compromise.

In London, Poland's ex-Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk indicated his terms for joining the new Government: the Russians must halt all deportations, withdraw their secret police (the NKVD, formerly the GPU), release all Poles from concentration camps, freely admit the foreign press to Poland, grant complete political freedom to all Poles (presumably including Russia's avowed enemies), guarantee Allied super vision of Polish elections. Addressing the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden bluntly warned Moscow that the British Government regarded the present Warsaw Poles with extreme distaste, expected something much more decent to emerge.

In response to all the criticism, Moscow did not explode and go its lone way, as it certainly would have done in the past. Instead, the Russians quietly released Mme. Tomasz Arciszewska, wife of the London Poles', anti-Russian Premier, whose arrest in Poland had touched off a storm of British protest. If Yalta had done nothing else, it had put the Russians on their best public behavior.

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