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Responsible men who have talked with Stalin all come away with the conviction that he has the fixed determination to destroy Hitler's Army and to punish, man by man, Hitler's henchmen. He has, they say, a fanatical desire to keep hammering the Germans, to keep them rolling, never to let them get set for a counteroffensive. Some say he wants to raze Berlin, as so many Russian cities have been razed. They are unanimous in believing that there is no thought of a negotiated peace in his stubborn mind. They are satisfied that the reason he did not attend the Casablanca conference was that he was busy at his desk directing the crucial stages of his offensive—and last week's news seemed to bear this out.
The Record. Since Stalin has been Russia's dictator, Russia has made much of abiding by signed agreements and official promises. The occupation of the Baltic States was accomplished by diplomatic pressure. The military occupation of part of Poland, the Russian argument runs, took place after the Government of Poland with which Russia had a non-aggression pact had ceased to exist. Fin land was attacked on the somewhat flimsy grounds that the Finns allegedly fired first. Nevertheless, Russia's efforts to keep the peace of Europe were stronger than most. She tried to give the League vitality. She led the way in making bilateral pacts.
The Russians themselves point to these promises as the definition of their war aims. Last week Pravda quoted Joseph Stalin's speech of Nov. 6, 1941: "We have not, nor can we have, such war aims as the seizure of foreign territories or the conquest of other peoples. . . . Our first aim is to free our territories and our peoples from the German Nazi yoke. We have not, nor can we have, such war aims as the imposition of our will and our regime on the Slavic and other enslaved peoples of Europe who are waiting for our help. Our aim is to help these peoples in their struggle for liberation from Hit ler's tyranny."
Other Russian declarations:
> On Russian border demands, Stalin said in the May Day order of 1942: "We want to liberate our Soviet land—our brothers the Ukrainians [including Bessarabians], Moldavians, White Russians [perhaps including those in its Polish sections], Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Karelians."
> Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky said to the Inter-Allied Meeting, London, Sept. 24, 1941: "The Soviet Union defends the right of every nation to independence and territorial integrity . . . and its right to establish such a social order and to choose such a form of government as it deems opportune and necessary. . . ."
> The Anglo-Soviet Treaty of May 26, 1942, says: "Britain and Russia wish to unite with other like-minded States in adopting proposals for common action to preserve peace and resist aggression in the postwar period."