DELAY BY SOVIET

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20030, 31 August 1939, Page 5

DELAY BY SOVIET

RATIFYING GERMAN PACT LONDON NOT SURPRISED WAR VALUE DOUBTFUL NAZI SUPPLY problem: (Elcc. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY, Aug. 30. No sign of surprise at the delay of the Soviet Government in securing ratification of the non-aggression pact with Germany can be elicited from official circles in London.

The recent experience that the British negotiations have had of Russian methods is reputed among well-informed journalists to 'have promoted certain ironic sympathy here with anyone who expects apparent success in ‘Moscow long to sustain its first (brightness.

Apart from such psychological factors, there is in diplomatic circles in London a tendency, after lenger reflection on the Soviet-Nazi agreement, to discount the earlier estimates of its practical advantages to -the German Government in a war ox aggression.

The probability of Russia’s lending active -military assistance was never put very high here, ibut some observers at first thought that supplies from the Soviet Union might go some way to repair the well-known deficiency of the Nazi war machine in certain essentials. -But those who have taken the trouble -to .acquaint themselves with Russia’s present economy strongly maintain that s'he is not in a position to supply raw materials such as those of which Germany would 'be short for war purposes, except in -very limited quantities. State of Railways Not the least of the impediments is ■the state of the ,Russian-German railways. Oil, for example, would have to come from Baku—exports from which are not in any case large in relation to the demands that Germany’s war needs would make. Transport over the 'Soviet railways to Baltic ports would present almost insuperable difficulties. It is not disputed that the Nazi Government, whose oil supplies, 'it is believed, would be exhausted after four or five months of war, would make great efforts to supplement them from Russian as well as from other sources, but the net gain to toe looked for from that quarter is assessed as very low indeed.

Therefore, the view is gaining ground among many people in London that when the very limited material gains of the agreement are set against the confusion of mind it has caused inside Germany and the acute discomfort it has created for her antiComintern friends, the pilgrimage of the German '.Foreign Minister, Herr von Ribbentrop, to the Kremlin, while admittedly a 'bold diplomatic stroke and a memorable episode in the history of political opportunism, will prove, should Herr Hitler choose to resort to war, to have altered the balance of forces very little, if at all, in favour of .Nazi aggression. It is believed that official opinion here would not dissent much, if at all, from this judgment.