BRITISH POLICY TO RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24895, 7 June 1946, Page 7

BRITISH POLICY TO RUSSIA

Potsdam Agreement Under Review ANNOUNCEMENT IN COMMONS (Rec. 7 P.m.) LONDON, June 6. Mr Hector McNeil, closing the foreign affairs debate in the House of Commons, said that the Government was subjecting the Potsdam agreement to review in the light of developments, and particularly if part of the agreement was being carried out and parts ignored. “Mr Bevin will continue to try to secure agreement with our Soviet Allies,” he said. “He will not do it by appeasement. One appeasement in any generation is one too many. Mr Bevin will not do anything which could be translated, on the other hand, as trying to shut out Russia from the sun.” Mr Bevin harboured no designs against Russia, said Mr McNeil. He sympathised with the Russians’ intention to maintain the place in the world which they had established in the war., "We would support them in any reasonable claim to establish themselves as -a world Power,” he said, “but we cannot do so by sacrificing the things enshrined in the United Natiqns Charter, to which Russia herself is a party. The British Government seeks now in international affairs to be a good European, and that is something for which we need never apologise,” said Mr McNeil. Attlee Replies to Debate “I think it is better to do these things through British eyes while trying, as far as possible, to understand the point of view of others,” said the Prime Minister (Mr Attlee), criticising members of the House of Commons who went abroad and saw everything “through Russian eyes,” hi his reply to the debate on foreign affairs. Referring to Trieste and the Tyrol, tie said that broadly speaking Britain

wanted to adopt a line giving the greatest possible number of people the rule of their fellow countrymen, but in dealing with ethnic considerations, economic considerations must not be forgotten. Some of the lines drawn after the last war were ethnically perfect but economically absurd. Dealing with Spain. Mr Attlee said that the real question was how best to enable the Spanish people to decide for themselves and get a decent government, but it was a fact that the Spanish people reacted most strongly against foreign intervention, and getting rid of one government did not necessarily mean that? a better one would be substituted.

“Peace treaties are qot made in a hurry, they require infinite patience,” he continued. “Mx> Bevin has shown infinite patience, but we are bound by Potsdam and the succession of decisions taken during the war at Yalta and elsewhere. “The difficulty regarding Potsdam is that the Russians insist on imparting into these agreements a rigid literal interpretation denying all flexibility to meet changing circumstances. I think that they disregard the spirit with which we entered into the agreement We want not a dismembered Germany but a federal Germanv shorn of the uniformity and over-centralisation which have characterised not only the Nazi but previous regimes. “We all understand the susoicion which exists in the Russians’ minds.” he said. “It comes from their history, but it is extraordinarily hard to make them understand that there k more than one voice in this country.” he said. “I wish they could hear our debates. They cannot aonreciate that the essence of western democracy is that there should be manv voices. That is reallv the Iron Curtain—it is a curtain between minds.” Mr Attlee added: “We must look uuon the Russian oeoole to some extent as if they were born in a dark forest. They do not seem to understand the sunlight, wind, or air of the free democracies.*