For eight successive days, ending last Friday, the United Nations Political and Security Committee listened to talk about plans for peace-one submitted by Russia and one by the United States and Britain. Then the Committee took a vote, deciding in favor of the western proposal. Both of the plans were apparently presented mainly for propaganda purposes and the odds are that the world will get no more peace than it had before the choice was made.

Vishinsky had offered the Russian plain in his first speech before this session of the U.N. in September, after he had belabored the U.S. and Britain for trying to start an atomic war. It proposed: 1) that the assembly condemn "preparations for war" being made by the two western nations; 2) that the assembly outlaw the atomic bomb as a weapon; and 3) that the assembly request the Big Five (U. S., Britain, France, China, and Russia) to make a new non-aggression pact.

The Western proposal, termed "essentials of peace," was largely a restatement of the aims of the U.N. coupled with an exhortation to participating nations to make their sections conform more completely with these aims. It asked, for example, that nations "refrain from using force contrary to the charter," that they cooperate in regulating armaments, and settle disputes by peaceful means. It also called for a re-examination of the veto power by the Big Five.

Whether the West was caught unawares by the Russian proposal is still a question. At first the U.S. and British delegations passed the entire thing off as "pure propaganda," pointing to the first Russian proposal. Some groups from small nations, even outside of the Communist sphere, however, thought that such a resolution could do not harm, and might even lessen the international tension. After the Russian recognition of China's Communist government, the U. S. State Department concentrated its attacks on the impossibility of a Big Five pact under the new conditions.

Finally on October 14, a Department spokesman announced that a joint Western plan would be forth-coming providing for atomic control, disarmament, and a general peace settlement. When the plan was presented on November 14, however, it was nothing of the kind. It was, instead, only a series of clauses seemingly directed against Russian policies and actions, in the U.N. and out. Thus, when the Committee voted for the plan, it merely voted against Russian, and for the West, and little also of a positive nature. The West indeed won a prestige victory, but it did not win peace.