OUTBURST BY STALIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1939, Page 5

OUTBURST BY STALIN

THE EUROPEAN OUTLOOK BRITAIN & FRANCE . ACCUSED SAID TO BE ENCOURAGING WAR. IN HOPE OF EVENTUAL VICTORY. (Independent Cable Service.) MOSCOW, March 11. Addressing 2000 delegates assembled here for the eighteenth congress of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin accused Britain and France of deliberately failing to check aggressors in order to encourage an . international war in the hope of eventual victory. He added that the British, French and American Press was fostering 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 first on growing economic, political and cultural power, secondly on political unity in its society, thirdly on its people’s friendship for one another, fourthly on the Red army land 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. 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 had 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 raf 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. SPREAD OF BOLSHEVISM REPORT BY COMINTERN SECRETARY. BRITISH PARTY WEAKEST IN THE WORLD. (Received This Day, 10.25 a.m.) MOSCOW, March 12. The Comintern Secretary, M. Manuilsky, reported to the tha' the Comintern membership in capitalist countries was 1,200,000 and that there were also 764,000 young Communists. He added that the British Communist party was the weakest in the world, despite a membership of 18,000 and increasing influence in trades union and labour circles.