CONFERENCES: Wanted: Understanding

Last week a Soviet delegate at the Big Four foreign ministers’ meeting bluntly asked a U.S. delegate: “What is it you want in Paris?”

The reply: “First, we want you to understand that you can’t get what you want by crashing your way through—the issues must be settled for the good of the world, not one nation alone. Second, we want you to know that the U.S. is willing to lean over backward to be fair to the Soviet Union.

“Your understanding of these two things is, fundamentally, what we want in Paris.”