(2 of 2)
Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, British Ambassador to Russia, gave an official version of Anglo-Russian relations. He emphasized in a speech broadcast to Europe that Germany was again "flaunting the Red peril." He said that there was a "deepseated wish, or more, a determination to work with the Russians in peace and in the war" that German propagandists could not shake. "Let them reflect for a moment," he said, "upon the common man in Britain and Russia and China, on his way of life ... a spontaneous revolt against anything for which the Fascists stand."
Blood for Blood. These were brave words, but they did not solve the problem of burgeoning Russian influence in Europe and in the Far East. Nor did they obviate the fact that many aspects of U.S. policy, including overtures to the Austrian Habsburgs, the Darlans, the Hungarian Horthys of Europe, are bound to drive Joseph Stalin even farther from any real collaboration with his nominal allies. Walter Duranty, the almost forgotten expert on Russia, last week gave his version of Russia's position in Europe:
"Joseph Stalin is fighting his own war, Russia's war, the war which he foresaw perhaps before anyone else and for which he prepared to defend his country.
"Bolshevism, it has been said, is a new religion, fanatical and iconoclastic. Such a view would present Mr. Stalin as Khaled the successor to Mohammed. Personally I doubt this. I see Mr. Stalin as the clear-minded statesman who looks at East and West . . . both ways at once.
"Will Russia drive into Germany and raise the Red Flag in Europe? She may. She may because the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Occupied Russia have been so frightful that blood must be paid in blood. ... Or he [Stalin] might want no part of Germany. . . . Unless I am mistaken, what Russia really wants is not concerned with Europe. . . ."
Quid pro Quo. Russia's attention may well focus on the Far East. Stalin may ask for "an independent Soviet Republic of Manchuria, affiliated with the U.S.S.R.; a similar Republic of Korea; and even, perhaps, the Northwestern Chinese Soviet Republic of Sinkiang, Ningsia and Shensi." Russia, said Duranty, wants control of West Pacific ports, has no love for Japan and will be willing to cooperate in "our death stroke" against the Japanese when the U.S. puts into action "a really powerful force of airplanes."
Left" out, as usual, in such a deal would be the nationalist aspirations of Free China, now close to economic collapse and pleading to be kept in the war by increased shipments of planes and the reopening of the Burma Road.
The Pay-Off. For Britain and the U.S. the problem was plainer every day: Russia holds too many trumps to be finessed in the game of politics. Equally plain: if the partners in war do not lay their cards on the table soon, there will be the devil to pay.