Uncertain Bearings

Like any man who has spent 32 years in politics, Jimmy Byrnes has a well-developed bump of caution. Lost in a storm over Moscow last week, he fretted : "You know, we might run into the side of a mountain." His interpreter, Charles E. Bohlen, pointed out that there were no mountains "around here." "That's fine," said Byrnes, "but do you know where 'here' is?" After a full hour of circling they landed, and Byrnes, in a tan topcoat and low pointed shoes, alighted in Moscow's sub-zero weather.

Ernie Bevin, who has spent 31 years in politics, is even more cautious than Jimmy Byrnes. With a wary look in his eye, Bevin arrived in Moscow swaddled in a heavy woolen suit, a thick olive-drab sweater, an enormous fur-lined and collared black coat and fleece-lined boots. He had to turn side wise to ease himself out of the plane's door.

Gnomes & Communiques. Byrnes went to Spasso House, the U.S. embassy, where he spent the next morning reading a long document prepared in Washington to brief him on Big Three issues throughout the world. Bevin went to the British embassy, where Ambassador Clark Kerr turned over to him his living room-bedroom-bath apartment which he calls "Proust" because it has a paneled bath room like the one in which Author Marcel Proust's Albertine used to splash. Clark Kerr's bedroom has dark walnut paneling under a royal blue border with gold flow ers. The paneling is covered with gnomes, dwarfs, beggars and oilier baroque gremlins. (Clark Kerr tells friends he wants an air gun so he can shoot gnomes.) Gnomish Viacheslav Molotov is cautious too. He presided at the first session of the Foreign Ministers' meeting, is sued a communique saying only that the Three had met. (The London conference had wrangled for hours over Molotov's insistence on uncommunicative communiques.)

Signs & Hopes. The world press wrote column upon column, but virtually nothing was known about what was going on at the Moscow conference. The atom, the Balkans, control of Japan were on the agenda. Hottest issue was Iran. The day the conference met, a revolutionary "National Government of Iranian Azerbaijan" was established at Tabriz with Russian support. Iran appealed to the Three, raising the cry of Russian interference with a fellow United Nation.

Maximum objective of the meeting was sufficient agreement between the Three to permit convocation of a general peace conference and to dispel the clouds of suspicion that hover over UNO. The conferees, however, stressed mininium objectives. Said Byrnes: "It will not be a bad sign if this meeting does not produce any communique announcing agreements." Said Bevin: "Patience is a more important word than hope."

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