BEVIN MORRISON
IT was clearly right that Mr. Bevin should resign. To say that does not, of course, imply the least disparagement of the high qualities he exhibited in the post of Foreign Minister, en office he had held longer than any predecessor since Sir Edward Grey, or the smallest lack of appreciation of the gallantry with which he carried on under conditions of health which would have sent a less resolute and public-spirited Minister into retirement long ago. Ernest Bcvin will be remembered as a great Foreign Minister, and the more so if he. or anyone else, some day discloses the various unseen difficulties the had to cope with. Assuming office in the middle of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, he has been fated to see inter- national relations steadily deteriorate through Russian machina- tions which by the nature of things he had no power to control or check. Since he could not control them he was compelled to counter them, and in the organisation of that regrettable necessity, the North Atlantic defence bloc, he played a promi- nent and perhaps decisive part. The foundations of it were laid not in the military but in the economic sphere, when General Marshall made his historic speech at Harvard and Mr. Bevin closed with the generous offer it embodied with a celerity born of a firm conviction of the service America could render to the 'world and a confident hope that she would not miss the oppor- tunity. The Marshall Plan, and the formation and operation of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, to which the British Foreign Secretary made as notable a contribution as anyone, saved this country and all Europe from an economic prostration which would inevitably have spelled military help- lessness. In his attempts to secure a settlement in Palestine comparatively early in the last Parliament Mr. Bevin was again frustrated by external influences outside his control. His restraint on federal enthusiasms in connection with the Council of Europe has been fully justified, no less than the policy he has pursued in regard to Germany and to the United Nations. It is fortunate that his experience and advice are still available in Cabinet.
From the Prime Minister's choice of a successor there will be little dissent. Of the qualities called for in a Foreign Secretary a detailed knowledge of foreign affairs is not the chief. There are plenty of experts with all the requisite knowledge available for consultation. A Foreign Minister, no less than any other, will stand or fall according to the wisdom with which he uses his experts. Here Mr. Morrison is likely to make no mistake. He is no doubt conscious of his limitations, which are, in fact, less than might appear, since major decisions in the foreign field have always been a matter for the Cabinet, and Mr. Morrison has necessarily taken his share in them. He has a swift and elastic mind, and may be expected to grasp new situations quickly and handle them without undue regard to precedents and prepossessions. Whether he can be as resolutely firm as Mr. Bevin where resolute firmness is called for remains to be discovered ; there is certainly no ground for an adverse judgement on that point in advance. There is one further con- sideration that must have weighed heavily with Mr. Attlee. In the political situation which exists domestically it is of the first importance to the Labour Party that the Foreign Secretary should be someone who can count on carrying the party, other than a sparse fringe of dissidents, with him. A man like Sir Hartley Shawcross might quite possibly deserve the preference in some respects, but as Attornby-General he is regarded as something of a technician, and he is in no sense embedded in Ibe party, as Mr. Morrison, who was one of the chief architects of its victory in 1945, must be recognised to be. There is no ground for withholding from the new Foreign Secretary any of the confidence that was reposed in his predecessor.
Mr. Morrison enters on his new duties with one supreme task before him, the maintenance of peace, and not merely that but the relaxation of tension and the establishment of some sort of understanding with Russia. That is a formidable, perhaps an impossible, undertaking. The governing fact, that it takes two to make a friendship, is inescapable. It takes two even. to relax hostility, and Mr. Morrison can in the first instance attempt no more than that. He has had little contact with the Russians, and his first contacts must necessarily be with our allies and associates of the Atlantic Treaty. His visit to Paris this week, for the meeting of the Committee of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe, will give him the opportunity of striking new acquaintanceships, as he has already been able to do in London with the Italian Ministers. And while he cannot easily signalise his advent to the Foreign Office by absenting himself from it, the value of an early visit to America can hardly be over-estimated. In American eyes Mr. Bevin is almost an institution ; the sooner they become familiar with his successor the better. If things go well the Council of Foreign Ministers will before long be meeting in Washington and that will give Mr. Morrison his opportunity. At present they are not going well at all, and though the Foreign Secretary is going to Paris this week on other business it is to be hoped that he will give some attention to the meeting of Foreign Ministers' deputies who, with Great Britain by no means adequately represented, are making such negligible progress with the adoption of an agenda for the major conference.
But it would be unjust to expect from a single Minister what no single Minister can achieve. Rarely did any Foreign Secretary cast his eyes on a map of the world that presented a more depres- sing prospect. With Malaya and Indo-China he has nothing officially to do, but he must take cognisance of them in his general assessment of the global situation. So he must of Siam. and of Persia, and of Yugoslavia, where the menace comes from the same inevitable source. And, of course, there is Korea. China itself and, in another order of things, Germany. From contemplation of all those danger-zones the same conclusion emerges: if only any kind of modus rivendi could be reached with Russia the world would at once become a different place. While, there is nothing to encourage much hope of that being accomplished Mr. Morrison is none the less in a position to exert endeavours. If he has the disadvantage of inexperience he has the advantage of not being tarred with any particular brush. Moscow has no cause, as yet at any rate, to transfer to him the hostility it has manifested towards Mr. Bcvin : he will hardly even rank as a tool of capitalist imperialism until he demonstrates himself to be that. Without losing sight for a moment of the primary and essential necessity of maintaining the closest co-operation with America he will certainly be alive to the importancd of keeping America and Russia as near together, or as little apart, as may be. That is the role which a British Foreign Minister is particularly qualified to ,assume, and it was never more important than at this moment. There has been too much ganging-up of the three Western Pov.crs against a single Russian colleague in conference ; Mr. Morrison might well introduce a different technique.
Some advances towards, Russia might even be considered. A Reuter message published on Tuesday reported the adoPitoll by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. of a law to the effect that the Supreme Soviet " actuated by the high principles of the Soviet policy of peace, aiming at the strengthening of peace and friendly relations between all nations, considers that war propa- ganda, whatever its form, undermines the cause of peace and creates the threat of a new war "; anyone engaging in such propaganda is therefore to be handed over to the courts as a common criminal. Now it is easy to be cynical about such a piece of legislation in such a setting ; it is, indeed, very difficult not to be. Russia has her own ideas of what war-propaganda is, and they are not our ideas, or anyone else's-. At the same time there ought to be a diplomatic way of saying " If your new law means anything we can talk." The habit of never referring to Russia in anything but terms of disparagement and mistrust, and accusation can get us nowhere. There is no question of letting ourselves be duped ; the new Foreign Minister is far too alert to be in any danger of that. But when a new mind applies itself to a new task, with great opportunities inherent in it, there is, at the outset at any rate, new hope of some accomplishment. No one will ask the impossible of Mr. Morrison. A good deal is expected of hint none the less.
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