SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 143, 13 March 1939, Page 9

SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY

Speech By Stalin At Bolshevist Congress

BRITAIN AND FRANCE

ACCUSED

Trying To Provoke War With Germany (Independent Cable Service.l (Received March 12, 6.30 p.m.) MOSCOW, March 11. Addressing 2000 delegates assembled here for the eighteenth congress of the Bolshevist Paity, Stalin accused Britain and France of deliberately failing to check aggressors in order to encourage an international war in the hope o eventual victory. . He added that the British. French and American Press was fostermg a Russian-German conflict over the Ukraine in order to poison the atmosphere and provoke a conflict.

Soviet foreign policy, he said, was aimed at peace, and at the strengthening of business relations with all countries. The Soviet would not be drawn Into a war against the Fascist States provoked by the democratic Powers, but sought neighbourly relations with border countries. Soviet foreign policy depended hist on growing economic, political and cultural power, secondly on political unity in its society, thirdly on its peoples friendship for one another, fourthly on the Red army and navy, fifthly on the Soviet’s peaceful policy, sixthly on the moral support of workers in peaceloving countries, and seventhly on the common sense of the Powers wanting peace. Imperialist War.

Stalin declared that the aggressive Powers were already fighting the new imperialist war against the non-aggres-sors— the United States, Britain and France, who were retreating and making concession after concession. The real reason why the democratic States tolerated that state of affairs was because they bad turned down collective security and had adopted non-interven-tion, which led to war. Those favouring non-intervention adopted the policy of letting others exhaust themselves In a war, and then “entering the field with fresh forces in the interests of peace” and dictating their own terms. Discussing British, French and American Press reports regarding a possible German seizure of the Soviet Ukraine, Stalin declared that this was intended to make Russia angry with Germany and to provoke a Russo-German war. “It is possible that there are German madmen dreaming of annexing the elephant of the Soviet Ukraine to that beetle the Carpatho-Ukraine, but if these madmen really exist we will find sufficient straitjackets for them,” said Stalin. He added that nobody could possibly think that Munich began a new pacific era.