Sentimental Journey

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 166, 28 August 1942, Page 3

Sentimental Journey

HE trouble with the war is that we shrink from saying, what we feel most strongly about it. Rather than be romantic we would be stupid and cowardly, and so the most elementary truths remain unspoken. Not one of us dares to say all he feels about Mr. Churchill’s visit to Russia in case someone else calls him _ sentimental. It is more than we can bear to be suspected of thinking, and to be almost capable of saying, that now most of the sus-|

picions between Moscow and London have been dispelled. Far less would we dare to suggest that Moscow and New York are now together. But deep down we all harbour such thoughts and cherish such hopes and know that if they are false the war is lost. Whatever additional reasons Mr. Churchill had for going to Moscow his fundamental reason was to convince Mr. Stalin, and through him the Russian army and people, that the British Government and British people were with them and wanted.to draw closer to them. To do this he had to show himself, let his own personality play on Stalin and Stalin’s on his until doubt disappeared. In short he went to Russia armed

only with goodwill; in other words with emotion; in other words with sentiment. It was a _ sentimental journey with, he hoped-as we all hope-a sentimental meeting and a sentimental ending. Stalin would like him better afterwards and he would like Stalin better, and the flow of their feelings would resolve their most obstinate questionings. They would of course call things by different names than these, even to themselves, and set their central problem in a different light. But it was a sentimental problem just the same, and if we wished to be brutally realistic we should have to say that the future of millions of men hung for some hours last week on the capacity of two men of 68 and 63 to be human beings.