Editorial: Potsdam
At Potsdam, shrine of militarism, the preliminary peace conference opens today under hopeful signs. Marshal Stalin’s tardy arrival forced a day’s delay. But it appears to have been in the best cause.
He has been closeted in Moscow with Premier Soong. If a Russian-Chinese agreement is in the making, as reported, it can do much to preserve Pacific peace after Jap militarism is destroyed. The fact that American Ambassador Harriman was the only outsider consulted on the Statin-Soong conversations reflects the vital interest of our country.
The importance of those negotiations to the Potsdam meeting cannot be exaggerated. Though this is a session of the Big Three without China, and though the Far East is not on the official agenda, actually Japan’s defeat and the future of that part of the world are basic to American-British-Russian relations. That is true even though Russia is not now at war with Japan, which restricts the official range of Potsdam.
While the Pacific problem will be at this conference in spirit, and while Middle Eastern and other questions will be discussed, of course the main task is a European settlement. That involves immediate occupation and rule of Germany, which the Big Three and France are to share. Also it includes preparation for the general Allied peace conference, or perhaps series of peace conferences.
Success of the Potsdam meeting is not assured. Indeed, complete success is impossible. For it will deal with scores of complicated and deep-rooted problems – military, economic, territorial and political – not one of which can be solved in any final sense. No statesmen ever have faced such a stupendous job.
If the Big Three can make a genuine start in dealing jointly and constructively with only a few of these issues, and can prevent some others merely from getting worse, theirs will be a great success as it is counted in this war-weary world.
That achievement will depend in part on the intelligence of the Big Three and their technical advisers. But it will rest most on the ability to get along together. They must meet one another halfway. Unless they can compromise selfish interests and resolve mutual differences, Potsdam will fail.
We think it will not fall. With all its ups and downs, it should advance the world nearer the goal for which so many have died and still die.