SOVIET INTENTIONS

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

SOVIET INTENTIONS

The cessation of Russo-Japanese hostilities on the imperfectly defined border between Outer Mongolia and Manchukuo, as the preliminary to a pact to terminate this uhdeclared Eastern war, appears to be amply confirmed. The next step, according to reports from several news sources, will be the fixing of a boundary along this frontier, by a Soviet-Japanese Commission thus resolving, at least temporarily, the friction between the two Powers. This development, taken in conjunction with the movements of Soviet troops on the Polish border, seems to indicate that the Soviet dictatorship has elected to play an inscrutable hand in power politics, at a period when a policy of strict nonintervention in the struggle of the Western Powers would have been Russia’s most worthy contribution to the cause of peace and freedom so persistently advocated by her at League sessions. It may be suggested, however, that while the Soviet’s actual aims and intentions regarding the war in Poland remain less than clear, it is as well that no alarmist conclusions should be drawn from the turn of events so far as it can be ascertained. What has occurred in Mongolia is that the Russians and Japanese are endeavouring to arrange for the cessation —or postponement—of a conflict which has kept the Japanese army in Manchukuo on the qui vive for a considerable time, and occupied the attention of the Soviet-Mongolian army. That this truce implies an agreement by which the Soviet will discontinue lending assistance to the Chinese in their resistance to the Japanese invader is assumed. Thus Japan would be free to concentrate more fully upon the Chinese campaign, leaving Russia in a more secure position to turn attention, as she has already done, to her European frontiers.