International: Moving Parts

At Potsdam, President Harry S. Truman proposed international control of Europe’s waterways. The plan fits the framework of U.S. policy: placing waterways under an international regime would tend to unify Europe’s economy and to break down national barriers to trade.

Last week in London eleven nations signed a pact creating an advisory European Central Inland Transport Organization. This was in some ways broader, in others narrower than Truman’s idea. It was broader because it included railways and highways as well as waterways; it was narrower because it affected only immediate operational problems, did not establish the political principle of internationalized transport. Russia, joining in the operational agreement, wanted more time to study the broader principle.