For four long days last week Lord Beaverbrook, Britain's Cabinet member-in-charge-of-aviation, the U.S. State Department's Assistant Secretary Adolf Berle, and seven other U.S. and British aviation "experts" talked over a pink-blottered mahogany table in the lime green, fresco-ceilinged conference room of London's ancient Gwydyr House (where The Beaver keeps his office as Lord Privy Seal). On the fifth day, The Beaver issued a vague press statement. So plushily vague was the statement that the dignified New York Times' London Bureau Head Raymond Daniell let fly with a parody of the diplomatic double talk.
The main on-the-record result of the talks, cabled Daniell sarcastically, was "that, while Mr. Berle and Lord Beaverbrook had not come to any agreement upon . . . any ... of the specific problems, they had agreed that the appearance of agreement on the basis of an understanding in the future was important enough to justify postponing the decisions until later." Reporters who flocked to a Beaver-Berle press conference the next day felt the same way: one U.S. correspondent was so annoyed that he shouted that the two gentlemen's combined efforts had produced "not a line worth printing," and slammed out of the room.
This was overdrawn. The press conference had produced an admission by The Beaver, usually a tough-minded Empire man, that "we've had to make concessions." The British took pains to describe Mr. Berle as an equally tough U.S. negotiator. Now Mr. Berle told the press: "We've made some concessions, too." The impression was that the following points had been agreed; if so, it meant real progress:
¶ Britain's desire for a tight International Air Transport Authority is much too restrictive for the U.S., which had 80% of the world's commercial air business before the war. But there should at least be an international body to set up technical flying standards (meteorology, landing-field and safety specifications, etc.). ¶ Government subsidies should be kept at a minimum and never used, as Berle put it, "to knock someone else out of the air."
¶ The ownership of strategic bases is not nearly so important as permission to use them. (Some reporters went so far as to predict that the U.S. would consent to exchanging some of its vast supply of commercial planes in return for rights to use some of Britain's bases.)
For the layman there was one clear and simple item of news: "Freedom of the Air," a high-sounding phrase that has mixed up a lot of plain citizens in their air-thinking, is now dead. Despite its wide touting by Henry Wallace and other quick thinkers, literal "Freedom of the Air" would only be possible if the whole world were under one government. No nation in its right mind now contemplates allowing other nations to fly through its sovereign skies at will.
Oil Talk Begins
There are two big new facts about the U.S. and international oil. One was widely publicized last week, one was still in the realm of whispering Washington dope—but the two were closely interwoven. The facts:
¶ The long-awaited U.S.-British oil conferences will begin this week.