Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1943. RUSSIA AND THE FAR EAST.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1943. RUSSIA AND THE FAR EAST.

American newspaper man of some note, Mr Walter Duranty, as lie is reported in a cablegram from New York, is credited with some remarkable statements as to 7 the aims M. Stalin is likely to pursue in the concluding stages of the war and afterwards. What Stalin really wants, the American publicist is quoted as saying, is not concerned with Europe, where he is only interested in holding the Baltic States and getting access to Istanbul and the Persian Gulf. His interest is focussed on the Far East, where he desires to establish independent Soviet republics in Manchuria, Korea and even in north-western China. Like a good many other people, Mr Duranty is of opinion that when German pressure on Russia is reduced, the Russians, as he puts it “will co-operate in our death-stroke against Japan, but the outlook would be gloomy indeed if any grounds existed for his declared belief that Russia under M. Stalin’s leadership, after helping to defeat the present world aggressors, will herself proceed to lay violent hands on Chinese territory. Nothing else than that is implied in the assertion that Stalin is intent on establishing “independent Soviet republics in Manchuria, Korea and north-western China. Manchuria at present is alleged by the Japanese to be an independent State and there is even some pretence of the independence of occuJ pied China, with its puppet regime. Against Mr Duranty’s peculiar ideas on the subject of Russian aims in the Far East there is to be set primarily the fact that both the Soviet Union and China are members of the United Nations, a grand alliance pledged to make an end of international aggression and brigandage and to uphold the rights of all nations. It is clear, too, that if Mr Duranty were right—fortunately there is every reason to believe that he is wrong—the twenty-year Anglo-Soviet Treaty, a pact to/which the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, says he has found'the Soviet Union desirous of giving full, enduring and ungrudging meaning, could be regarded as nothing else than an entirely worthless' scrap of paper. No world peace which Britain, the United States and other members of the United Nations can agree to combine in upholding can look to any other settlement in the Far East than one providing for the recovery by China of all the territories of which she has been robbed for the time being by criminal aggressioiy Mr Duranty’s alarmist opinions rather obviously run counter to the present trend of world events and the development of international policy. They are very completely at variance, too, with the expressed views of Mr Joseph E. Davies, who was United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union ■from 1936 to 1938 and has had altogether exceptional opportunities of making himself familiar with the policy and aims of the Soviet Government. In his book “Mission to Moscow,” which includes notes and comment on events and developments up to October, 1941, Mr Davies declares' that “outside of the President of the United States alone, no government in the world saw more clearly the menace of Hitler to peace and the necessity for collective security and alliances among non-aggressive nations than did the Soviet Government.” In concluding passages of his book, Mr Davies says that in his opinion the Russian people, the Soviet Government and the Soviet leaders are moved, basically, by altruistic concepts and adds:— The British Empire, the Americas, and Russia, along with China, are the great complementary power of the earth. Their interests, their governmental ideas and purposes do not conflict. . , . They have the common purpose to thwart Hitler’s effort to dominate the world and impose a programme of pagan, utilitarianism and Nordic mastery over Christian and other ethical peoples of the earth. They would have a common will and purpose not only to defeat the Nazi-Fascist forces, but also to aid the defeated people of the aggressor nations to reform their own governments so that all men might live in a decent world, inhabited by civilised, human beings and not by denizens of a jungle whose only rule is that of tooth and claw, / ' ’ It is certainly in these conditions only that peace and security can be established throughout, the work! and happily, in spite of alarmist theories to the contrary, no good reasons appear for. doubting that Russia will enter readily and loyally into the international co-operation on which the future welfare of all nations must depend.