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Britain and the Soviet Union, reshaping and building up their spheres of influence in eastern and western Europe, stood toe-to-toe in occupied Germany. Weakened France, nervously balancing its position in the west against the new power in the east, was using its claims to a share of Germany as a bargaining point with both Britain and Russia. The U.S., well into an unfamiliar game, had based its occupation plans (see below) on the assumption that Germany was to be solely an occupation problem. Now, before the occupation was well begun, that assumption was dead.
Spheres in San Francisco. The same contest was much in evidence at the San Francisco conference. As every delegate realized, the purpose of the conference was not to end the contest, but to agree on rules that might keep it within peaceful bounds.
Dumbarton Oaks, the Big Powers' draft of a world charter, rested on the premise that the way to keep the peace was to let the chief contestants make and administer the rules with a minimum of interference and assistance from lesser powers. After three weeks of world debate in San Francisco, this proposition was still intact. But it had undergone some severe strains.
Americans inclined to dismiss or shun the looming contest for world power would have done well to ponder the principal questions raised in San Francisco last week.
The small and middle-sized powers made a little progress—a very little—in their efforts to win a larger share of authority in the forthcoming world organization. But every move to spread the power among all the member nations was offset by a move to limit its actual use by or against any nation, big or small. At the showdowns, the U.S. was as sensitive as the
Soviet Union to any proposal to restrict any Big Power's final freedom of action. Alone among the Big Three, the British delegation showed a real desire for anything approaching real collective action and security. The alternative was the document slowly emerging in San Francisco—a charter for a world divided into power spheres.
Historic Insistence. Last week the U.S. and its immediate sphere were involved in hot debate. The question: whether the Pan American system erected by the U.S. and its Latin American neighbors should be subject to the .world Security Council, and through the Council to the veto power of any Big Five member.
Involved in this issue, as everyone had foreseen at the recent Pan American conference in Mexico City (TIME, March 5 et seq.), was the Monroe Doctrine's historic insistence upon the independence and political self-sufficiency of the Western Hemisphere (excluding Canada). When
Dumbarton Oaks was drafted, the U.S. subscribed to its clear declaration that action under any regional arrangement should be subject to the Security Council. At Mexico City, Secretary of State Stet-tinius dodged the question by postponing it to San Francisco. At San Francisco last week, it rose to haunt him.
The Latin delegates, feeling the muscle of their 20 conference votes, unanimously demanded complete freedom from any-check or supervision by the Security Council. Senators Connally and Vandenberg, well aware of the Monroe Doctrine's sacrosanct appeal to the Senate, felt that some concession to the turbulent Latins was necessary if the charter was to be ratified.