Europe

ON THE WORLD TODAY

POTSDAM signals the first steps toward the rebuilding of Europe by the United Nations. The Big Three, who outlined Germany’s penance and her eventual rehabilitation as a predominantly agricultural nation, were undoubtedly confirmed in this decision by the knowledge that the atomic bomb had been perfected. No future Hitler must have at hand the means of destroying civilization.

The Big Three were already the Big Four when France was admitted to the Military Control Commission at Berlin. They now become the Big Five with the establishment of the standing committee of Foreign Secretaries, to which China has been added.

This committee will bear the chief burden of framing peace treaties, defining boundaries, adjusting reparations, and reshaping the shattered economy of Europe. It will bring in the lesser Allies for conference on all matters directly affecting the interests of any of them.

Lamentations that the Potsdam meeting did not become another Congress of Vienna and frame peace settlements all round, once for all, are childish. The Europe which in 1945 has to be salvaged, put back in order, rebuilt, and renewed in physical and spiritual energies is not the Europe of 1815. The great complex of problems confronting her today cannot be solved at any single meeting of three powers, however mighty they may be at the moment. Nor can the executive leaders of the United States, Russia, and Great Britain, to say nothing of France and China, set aside, for the months such meetings would require, the responsibilities which their positions thrust on them in their own lands.

The reaffirmation at Potsdam of the unity of the major powers does not mean that there is any lack of high explosive in the undertakings ahead. There is plenty. The provisions adopted for reduction of German military power and for the economic and political reorientation of the Reich show, however, that divisive dangers can be managed if coöperative common sense is applied.

New government in France

In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the upsurge of revolutionary change continues. France faces this situation with few means available to absorb the shock. Her political structure is disrupted and cannot be mended until a new governmental system is built from the bottom up and is fortified by a mandate from a French electorate newly expanded by millions through extension of the franchise to women. Hence, as the pressures increase, the struggle to hammer together an acceptable political structure becomes daily more urgent, and delays are ominous.

On October 21 the French nation will give its views on this colossal task by electing a Constituent Assembly. The issues are already clear. In part they represent a conflict between those who would patch up a political compromise with the past, and those who insist on a new governmental system.

The Socialists, the Communists, the General Confederation of Labor, and the Resistance forces demand a clean sweep. They want to implement the program of modified state socialism adopted by the Provisional Government while it was still in exile at Algiers. To this end they seek in the October elections a Constituent Assembly which shall have power to write a new Constitution and, at the same time, to govern France. Their goal is a unicameral legislature and a Fourth Republic.

The Radical Socialists, led by veteran 73-year-old Édouard Herriot, would travel more cautiously. They believe that it would suffice to overhaul the