SOVIET AIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1939, Page 5

SOVIET AIMS

BID FOR FAR=REACHING POWER LEADING PART WANTED IN CONFERENCE POSSIBILITIES DISCUSSED. POLICY OF OPPORTUNISM MEANTIME. Ry Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. NEW YORK. October 22. A dispatch from Mr G. E. R. Gedyc, the Moscow correspondent of the “New York Times,’’ stales I hat the key to Russian foreign policy is unchanged. 11 is distrust of the capitalist Governments, especially of Britain and France. Only acceptance of this will enable, an understanding of the Soviet aims, which are centred on pursuing the opportunist present policy with the object of securing Russia against an imagined general onslaught bv the Western Bowers.

On the one hand Russia is establishing outposts to defend her frontiers, and on the other she is seeking to weaken the imperialisms from within by pacific propaganda, which is pursued in Germany equally as in Britain and France.

Russia, fearing a conference from which she is excluded, is playing a role directed at obtaining the leading voice in a conference at which to seek to force Britain to relinquish India, Japan to relinquish China, and Germany to relinquish Poland and Czechoslovakia. This policy represents a reinsurance against the possible turning of a premature peace against Russia whose primary interest is the continuation of the war.

The extend to which her aims may stretch cannot be predicted. Sooner or later she will certainly demand the Ruthenian Ukrainians from Hungary, giving her a common frontier with Czechoslovakia, whose eventual liberation Russia expects. The Soviet fears a French and British rapprochement with Japan, which would undoubtedly follow hostile Russian activity on India’s frontiers. Signs of a military dictatorship or ( a Conservative Government' in ‘Germany with whom France and Britain might sign a peace would precipitate Russian action against Germany. Meanwhile, save for the slight possibility of a conflict over Finland. Russia is likely to concentrate on consolidating her new outposts.