ANGLO-SOVIET RELATIONS.

Wairarapa Age, 7 March 1927, Page 5

ANGLO-SOVIET RELATIONS.

EFFECTS IN FAB EAST. PUNGENT FRENCH COMMENTS. (Received Sunday 5.5 p.m.) , PARIS, March 5. The British Opposition leader’s support of Sir Austen Chamberlain’s Note to the Soviet has created a deep impression. Several newspapers declare that the crux of the question is the old Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Far East, which is described by one writer as a struggle between a whale and an elephant, but the elephant has at present become an army of ants burrowing everywhere secretly, while the whale is no longer able to summon the assistance of the Japanese dragoa, owing to Britain’s abandonment of the Japanese Alliance in order to please the United States, though the necessity for an Anglo-Japanese Alliance is becoming daily more plain. The Press does not expect that Britain will break off relations with Russia till the other European Powers are prepared to follow her example. The impudent tone of the Soviet’s reply is considered due to Bolshevism and to its leaders’ desire to distract attention from the unsatisfactory economic position of Russia.

Pirtinax, in an article in the “Echo de Paris,” points out that Japanese ports are only forty-eight hours from Shanghai and adds: “If as formerly British and Japanese politics had been united, the scenes at Hankow would never have occurred.”—(A. and N.Z.)