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PARTISAN REVIEW
the Charter. And it is arguable that the same might be said of the
decision, also taken at this time, to employ the first two atomic bombs
for the purpose of studying their effect upon human habitations. But
these lapses from grace could still be regarded as familiar instances
of the tension between general aims and particular methods. What
weighs more heavily in the scales, now that the 1945 settlement has
disclosed its consequences, is that the aims themselves appear to
have had only a very limited relation to the facts.
The casual manner in which the Potsdam decisions canceled ten
centuries of European history (incidentally sanctioning mass expul–
sions, spoliations, and killings exceeded in scale only by Hitler Ger–
many's own accomplishments) was already a sign that control had
slipped from those who in former times had seen to it that European
wars were conducted for limited objectives, and brought to an end
with the minimum of disturbance to Europe's general equilibrium.
At the Potsdam conference Great Britain appeared for the last time
as one of the Big Three, on an equal footing with the United States
and the Soviet Union. At most succeeding international conferences
Britain was accompanied by France, and it gradually became clear
that, save on those rare occasions when she could rally the whole
Commonwealth, her status was that of a Western European country
allied to the United States, rather than a "third" center of power
lying outside the American and Russian orbits. But at Potsdam the
wartime Big Three still met on equal terms, and the British Govern–
ment once more attempted, though without success, to perform that
moderating role which Wellington and Castlereagh had exercised at
the close of the Napoleonic epoch, and which corresponded as much
to Britain's tradition as it did to Europe's interest. That so little real
weight was placed behind this effort must be debited to Churchill's
obsession with the Anglo-American partnership, and to the medi–
ocrity of his Labor colleagues-and-successors who, by their behavior
on this crucial occasion, gave advance notice of the fundamental help–
lessness they were to display during six years in office. But the real
authors of the settlement were of course the United States and the
Soviet Union, and their motives were all too clear. On the Russian
side, the wartime fusion of chauvinist and revolutionary sentiment
into the new imperialist amalgam led to a policy of conquest which
pushed the frontiers of the Soviet Empire as far west as they would
