Oooooo!

A specter is haunting Russia--the specter of socialism. Britain's Labor Government had been in power little more than a month when last week that wayward wraith, the western bloc, in the guise of an entente of western Europe's socialist governments, began to clank familiarly through the international corridors. Its promoter was Professor Harold J. Laski (TIME, Aug. 13).

In Copenhagen, the Danish Social Democrats' first postliberation congress drew socialist premiers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, socialist representatives from Belgium, Holland, France. Professor Laski, who has been skimming, swallow-like, from one European socialist conference to another, was also irresistibly attracted.

The theme song of the conference was: "Scandinavians, get together." Even Sweden's cautious Premier Per Albin Hansson was stirred to apostrophize a common Scandinavian labor market, economic collaboration, common Nordic citizenship. Laski too was stirred. Hailing the advance of socialism in Britain, France, Belgium and Scandinavia, he cried: -"All of us stand side by side."

Second-Class Powers, Unite. In Stockholm a few days later he was more explicit. Said the Professor, in a casual appraisal of Britain's new world position calculated to drive Winston Churchill into his grave: "Not even America and Russia can live alone. Still less can second-class powers like Britain and Sweden. Why cannot the Foreign Ministers in the socialist Swedish and British Governments--and soon in the Norwegian and Danish--meet and draw up a program together?" By that time Danish Foreign Minister John Christmas Moeller and Norwegian Foreign Minister Trygve Lie were already in London, talking trade and credits with British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

Then the London Times caught fire. Keeping a wary eye on Moscow, and carefully repudiating the word bloc in favor of the word grouping, the Times said:

"The Belgian Foreign Minister this week expressed his country's desire for close understanding between France and Great Britain and for the entry of Belgium into a western European grouping within a system of collective security. . . . The reorganization of eastern Europe is in hand and a comparable movement in the west would complete the process. ... In the forefront of immediate purposes stands the question of an Anglo-French alliance. . . . [But] Europe can prosper only as a whole and nothing could be more disquieting and reactionary than partnerships or associations smacking of rival blocs. The momentous alliance between Great Britain and Russia was designed ... to associate east and west in a partnership of peace; and that still stands as the supreme test of European statesmanship. It is the condition precedent of any Anglo-French alliance and of any larger grouping that may follow."

Atomic Reaction. The Kremlin's reaction was of almost atomic intensity. Cried Commentator Karl Hoffman in Red Star: "It is significant that not a single Labor paper has opposed the conceptions put forward by the Times which are difficult to fit in with the common task of the Allied nations to ensure a firm peace. . . . A prescription has been found [by the Times]; eastern tendencies must be opposed by western ones, and for this purpose elements in western European countries who are displeased with the new democratic arrangements of eastern Europe and who are now dreaming once again of setting up a cordon sanitaire against the U.S.S.R. must be encouraged. The tendencies of the democratic forces in France, Italy and other western European states are well-known. They are trying to establish close collaboration with all democratic states in the interest of ensuring universal security. These tendencies apparently displease certain personalities in London. The tune now played reminds one of Chamberlain and Daladier."

Cried Pravda: "An obviously reactionary enterprise."

Due soon in London was a stalwart trusty of Europe's only functioning bloc --Russia's eastern grouping. Czechoslovak Premier Zdenek Fierlinger was coming to discuss British-Czech relations, and, perhaps, to test the political velocity of the new democratic wind blowing from the west.

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