Lionel Gelber

Europe and America are like a married couple who cannot live happily together yet cannot live apart. Their marriage, so far as it derives from mutual interest rather than a romantic attachment, might, in the old days, have been described as a marriage of convenience. A marriage of inconvenience would, however, be a more apt description of a union in which partners who are incompatible in many respects yet are welded indissolubly together. It is comforting that wedded bliss is not conspicuous in the Sino- Soviet household. There is solace in the fact, too, that when the West is challenged from without, domestic friction diminishes. But it is not only against a chronic threat from the East that it has had to close ranks. There are new developments within the West, and as it tries to adjust itself to these it may be thrown into a vexatious disarray.