THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, September 18, 1939. GERMANY AND RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23916, 18 September 1939, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, September 18, 1939. GERMANY AND RUSSIA

.The report that an agreement has been entered into between Germany and Russia that, if they are afforded the opportunity of dping so —a reservation for which the agreement does not make provision—there will be a partition of the greater part of Poland between them has been circulated with so much circumstance that greater credence must be given to it than is merited by many of the reports that obtain currency during a war period. In the earliest days of the war which, though it has not yet lasted three weeks, has been accompanied by indescribable suffering on the part of the Poles, Russia intimated her determination to “rectify,” her western frontiers. Whether Germany was privy to this intimation must for the present remain a matter of conjecture. It is difficult to believe, however, that during the many weeks in which Russia was making excuses for protracting her negotiations for the conclusion of a treaty with Great Britain and France, she was not negotiating also with her implacable enemy, Germany. The swiftness with which the nonaggression pact between Russia and Germany was brought into operation is hardly explainable on any assumption other than that the groundwork for it had been prepared prior to the visit of Herr von Ribbentrop to Moscow. The history of diplomacy does not furnish any parallel to the expedition with which, in the absence of secretlyconducted conversations of a preliminary nature, this pact was solemnly executed. The elaborate courtesies, moreover, with which Herr von Ribbentrop was greeted in Moscow were in marked contrast to the reception that was accorded to the members of the British and French missions. Though the Union Jack and the Tricolour were not to be seen when these missions reached their destination, a large swastika which was flying from the mast and five smaller ones displayed on the airport building confronted the father of the Anti-Communist Pact when he stepped from his plane at the central airport. These smaller swastikas had been manufactured on the night prior to his arrival when it was found impossible to obtain German flags in Moscow. An official welcome was extended by promim-nt members of the Soviet Administration, and then Herr von Ribbentrop entered a luxurious, bullet-proof limousine—one of several which M. Molotov, the Prime Minister, uses, but now bearing the swastika flag at the front—and drove to the former Austrian Legation through streets cleared of traffic and patrolled at short intervals by police. War, like misfortune, makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows, but there can have been no more curious partnership than that between the Germany of Herr Hitler and the Russia against which Herr Hitler has directed his extensive vocabulary of vituperative expressions. And there is certainly nothing that is intrinsically impossible in an arrangement under which Russia hopes to secure her price for the pact of non-aggression. Russia may, however, be apprehensive that other countries are as adept at double-dealing as she is herself, and it would seem that, justly suspicious of the good faith of the Nazis, she is providing herself with a pretext for possible military action against Poland. Borrowing Germany’s somewhat threadbare technique, she professes herself to be shocked by the oppression of ininorities in Poland. As these minorities, which have not, so far as is known, themselves complained of their treatment, consist largely of White Russians, their own feelings over the prospect of their being committed to the tender mercies of the Soviet may well defy analysis. The solicitude of Russia for the welfare of these people, as manifested in the mobilisation of troops to the number of two millions, is said to have excited concern in Germany. That feeling of concern may possibly be intensified now that Russian troops have, as is announced this morning, invaded Polish territory. The close association of the Soviets and the Nazis has, it may be judged, not entirely allayed their mutual suspicions.