Bristling

Like chicks flocking to the mother hen when the storm clouds gather, Russia's satellite leaders were coming to Moscow for encouragement--and for gold, food, arms, war materiel--as the two worlds on either side of the Stettin-Trieste line braced themselves.

Polish President Boleslaw Bierut led his seven-man delegation (including no representative of Stanislaw Mikolajczk's Peasant Party) from their plane in Moscow, stepped to a microphone to say, "Long live the indestructible friendship of the Polish and Soviet peoples."

In the negotiations that followed, Russia promised to finance military equipment for Polish armies and to speed up food shipments to Poland. The loan followed close upon Washington's suspension of a $90 million Polish loan; Washington had charged that Poland had failed to give the U.S. full information on its foreign economic agreements (especially with Russia). Devastated Russia (see FOREIGN NEWS) was willing to dig into her own depleted pockets to buy neighborly good will. Stanislaw Szwalbe, Poland's First Vice President, spelled out the Polish-Russian maneuver: "Closer cooperation with Russia becomes the more important ... in connection with the difficulties in establishing economic relations with the Anglo-Saxon countries."

Britain's announcement that anti-Russian General Anders' 100,000 Poles in Italy would be brought to Britain instead of being sent back to Poland touched off a bitter press campaign in Moscow and London (see cut). The exiled Polish Army's duty is "not yet finished," said Anders in Italy. "Our march to a free and independent Poland goes on." Pravda charged that certain "circles" in the U.S. and Britain "dream of finding for the Polish emigre troops a 'suitable use.'"

When our barns are full. Two and a half hours after the Bierut mission took off to return to Warsaw, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia arrived at Moscow's Central Airport. Resplendent in visored garrison cap with a gold MacArthurian band of "scrambled eggs," dress-blue tunic and breeches, polished black cavalry boots and white doeskin gloves, he too stepped to the airport microphone, said: "The peoples of Yugoslavia have seen that in the Soviet Union they have a most sincere friend and most reliable defender."

Tito, after his fashion, had been reciprocating. Last week a wave of political arrests in Yugoslavia rounded up people suspected of being too friendly with the Americans and British. Reports came from Belgrade that more reservists, in smart new Russian-type uniforms, were being called up. No Yugoslav dared be seen at a British or American information center.

Rumania's Premier Petru Groza got U.S. and British notes, charging that Rumania had failed to live up to the Moscow agreements--had censored stories critical of Communists, had not scheduled free elections. Police broke into the American Military Mission headquarters in Bucharest and arrested all Russian civilian employes. Groza issued a routine denial of the U.S. charges, added a priceless promise: "The elections will take place when our barns are full."

For a Nominal Sum. The Western powers were busy on their own side of the line. Britain announced that it had undertaken ("for a nominal sum," said one Briton) to equip and help train a new French Air Force. The U.S., pressing for economic unity in Germany, suspended reparations shipments from its zone. The British did not immediately follow suit, but the betting was that ten war plants (including part of the Krupp works at Essen), ready to be shipped to Russia, would not be moved.

It wasn't war along the Stettin-Trieste line, but it wasn't peace either.

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