How Happy Will This

New Year Be?

Many months ago, Khrushchev said that, if the Berlin issue were not settled, he would sign a peace treaty with East Germany “before the end of December”. He said that was “final and irrevocable”.

Well, December 31 has come and gone, and the Berlin matter is not settled, and there is no war — yet.

But the New Year dawns on an indescribably tortured world.

The Communist bloc is carrying on the Cold War with undiminished vigour. The West seems to have no answer.

Behind a rallying-cry of “Down with Colonialism” . the Com munists have aroused a large proportion of the non-European races against the West. As fast as the West smoothes out a trouble here, a new one bobs up there. Never did our leaders seem more inept and helpless. The United Nations, which was to have policed the world against war, appears now in a state of disintegration. Germany is withdrawn and unco-operative, preparing for her inevitable clash with Russia. France is so completely bogged down in Algeria that she is o. menace, rather than a help, to the West.

The Western Alliance, in practical fact, consists today of United States and British Commonwealth—and there are basic differences between them that are dangerous and perhaps irreconcilable.

The only comforting thing in sight is the condition of Red China —fiercely antagonistic to Russia, plans for world power smothered under a “population explosion”, a series of natural disasters ( drought and famine ) destroying the plans of the Red leaders.

Has China’s helplessness induced Khrushchev to return to his co existence policy? Or has he decided that the Cold War is doing so well that a Hot War is not necessary, after all?