AN ALLEGED UNDERSTANDING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 September 1939, Page 6

AN ALLEGED UNDERSTANDING.

that would be extremely disturbing if it were true was conveyed in a! cablegram from Berlin yesterday and is supplemented today, ft is alleged that an understanding has been reached whereby Russia would occupy Polish Ukrainia and Germany Western Poland, a central Polish buffer State being created between these areas of annexation. Possibly this prediction of yet another partition of Poland may be only an example of wishful thinking in Nazi circles. The outlook in Europe evidently will be improved materially if the Berlin story is authoritatively denied. As yet the Soviet Government appears to have had nothing to say on the subject, but another cablegram yesterday quoted extensively from an article in which the “Pravda” attacked Poland bitterly as a country no longer fit to govern herself and accused her of oppressing her Russian and other minorities. On the other hand, the Poles are reported to have no fear of Russian intervention and to have denied categorically reports that 1 he Polish Embassy is ready to leave Moscow. Obviously if Russia engaged in a partition of Poland she would become the partner of Nazi Germany, no longer in a non-aggression pact, but in an extension of the policy of aggression and international brigandage. It hardly needs to be pointed out that if events took that course, the Allies, fighting to overthrow Nazism and to uphold Polish independence, would find themselves confronted by an enormously magnified task. No dependable information is available at the moment as Io the probable trend of Russian policy. Since its forces were defeated decisively in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, the Soviet has given every indication of being contented with its existing European frontiers and, in marked contrast to Nazi Germany, has abstained from a provocative, or menacing attitude towards the Baltic and other succession States. It would be a development of evil augury for Europe and for the world at large if Russia should now’ depart from that attitude and policy by engaging with Germany in another partition of Poland.