Tests of Allied Unity

Report Outline
Soviet Efforts to Divine Western Allies
Strains within the Western Alliance
Shifts of Public Opinion in Free Nations
Special Focus

Soviet Efforts to Divine Western Allies

Efforts to strengthen the unity of the western world, in the face of Soviet efforts to divide the non-Communist nations, are now being made in every field in which serious divergencies have appeared since the change of Russian leadership in March.

At the Bermuda conference, Dee. 4-8, President Eisenhower meets with British Prime Minister Churchill and French Premier Laniel to canvass “various matters of common concern.” The chief of these is the response to be made to the Russian note of Nov. 26 withdrawing previous conditions and agreeing to a four-power conference on Germany. More hope of constructive results has been expressed in London and Paris than in Washington, where the latest Soviet maneuver, timed to coincide with a French parliamentary crisis over the plan for a European army, was regarded as another attempt to undermine the western alliance.

Reassessment of Allied Tasks at Bermuda

Differences of outlook and political strategy among the Big Three, and among other non-Communist nations, have admittedly hampered efforts to mobilize the full strength of the free world to meet the global challenge of the Soviet Union. The need for greater unity of purpose and action was recognized soon after the assumption of power by the Malenkov regime when the governments of Great Britain, France and the United States first planned the forthcoming Bermuda conference.