TWO SIDES TO A CURTAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 407, 11 April 1947, Page 18

TWO SIDES TO A CURTAIN

(In this, the third of: his series of talks on foreign affairs in the BBC's

|. Third Programme,

A. J. P.

TAYLOR

gives his views on British policy

towards the Soviet Union.)

RESENT policy in relation to the Soviet Union-well, so far as there is one-lI should say is something like this: find out what the Russians are doing and tell them not to. The first part of the injunction is not easy to carry out; therefore, the second seems to me executed all the more zealously. We refuse to allow Russia at the Straits the security which we have at Gibraltar and the Suez Canal; we oppose the Yugoslav claims at Trieste; we oppose the Bulgarian claims to an outlet on the Aegean; we protest against the Rumanian elections; we even seek grievances against the indubitably democratic government of Czechoslovakia. The Americans can, at any rate; reinforce their protests with action; they can. threaten to starve those countries who do not play according to American rules and do not accept what is called the spiritual and democratic way of life. We protest for the sake of protesting. This policy might make sense if the British Government was projecting a war against Russia as the advance guard of America, that atomic, spiritual power. But it would be idiotic to suppose that the British Government is projecting any such thing. Its motive, so far as it has one, appears to be the belief that no agreement can be reached with the Russians so long as they are in their present mood of suspicion and isolation and that, therefore, before anything can be done, the Russians have to be convinced that their present policy will not work. "Suspicious of us?" we say. "How absurd. We'll soon cure you of your suspicions’ by giving you something to be suspicious about." * BY) a UT I think it puts it in the wrong light to talk as if British policy in regard to Russia has, for the most part, a motive or a consistent plan. It simply continues, in my opinion, the distrust of everything Russian which has been a constant element in British policy for more than a century. At the Congress of Vienna, after the defeat of Napoleon, Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, said he would never be a party to assisting ‘"‘a Calmuck prince to overrun Europe." Now look at the pictures of the rulers of Europe in 1814, at present on show at Burlington House, and compare the picture of the Tsar Alexander with the pictures of the Emperor of Austria or: the King of Prussia. What on earth led a British Foreign Secretary to describe the most intelligent, cultivated, and attractive ruler of his day as a Calmuck prince? Why, he was a Russian-that’s explanation enough. Take any episode of international relations you like, from the Congress of Vienna to the present day, and you will find that British diplomats have applied | ‘to Russia standards that they would not apply.to any other Great Power: have always believed the worst of Russian policy and have always behaved worse themselves as a result. I believe that

there is a historical explanation of this hostility and distrust: the Russians were the only Power who could expand their Empire and even threaten British interests, say in India or China, without having to cross the seas. Look at the difference with France; the French were often a nuisance in Egypt or in central Africa or in Siam, but they had to cross the seas to get there and, so long as we had command of the seas, they had to give way in the last resort. But seapower could not stop Russia’s advance across Asia. In other words the wickedness of Russia in the eyes of the rest of the world consists simply in this: she was, and is, a truly independent Power. She could not be brought to neel by sea-power in the past and she cannot be brought to heel by the atomic bomb now. xe ie 9 , NABLE to subordinate Russia to the Anglo-Saxon way of life, we take it out of the Russians by blaming them for all our difficulties: for instance, wee try to make out that the present impoverishment of Germany, due to the German effort to conquer the world, is caused-or at least aggravated by the Russian unwillingness to restore an easy-going German capitalism. But it may be said that British policy has no choice. Quite apart from our economic dependence on America, which compels us to mortgage our future. prosperity and to commit-our young men to America’s military plans, and however unfounded our suspicions of Russia were in the past, this time they are wellfounded. Russia, it is said, has taken the place of Germany as the great aggressor Power. Whenever I hear people talk like this, I call to mind the judgment passed on British policy after the first German war: "We treated the Germans as though they were English and the French as though they were Geramns." I won’t say whom we are treating as though they were English now; but it is obvious that we are transferring to the Russians all the faults that we once saw in the Germans-a mistake, I believe, as gross and likely to be as terrible in its consequences as when we made it with the French. % * Pe N .my opinion, an opinion that is solidly based on known facts, Russia has neither the power nor the will to follow an aggressive policy. The friends of Russia, and the Russians themselves, have done Russia great harm by exaggerating Russian strength. Russia conducted a great defensive war, the greatest in history, and at the cost of sacrifices without parallel destroyed the bulk of the German army. But she is not an industrial giant as America is: there is only one giant in the world to-day. At present the productive power of Russia is about on a level with our own; and Russia has not got the reserves of centuries of wealth on which we can still draw. Russia could, no doubt, wage another defensive war if she had to; a war of aggression is not within her grasp, and it is not within her will either.

People-very often those who were most enthusiastic on agreement with Hitler -~now ask "What is the difference between Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany?" The answer is simple: ‘There are seven million differences-the seven million Russian dead who lie between Stalingrad and Berlin." The Germans fought in order to conquer Europe and then the world; the Russians fought in order to be left alone-this was, and is, the sole motive of Russian foreign policy. a Don't forget that Russia has been invaded by European Powers three times within 30 years, and each time ‘with the most terrible destruction: the German invasion between 1914 and 1918; the British and French invasions, which were called wars of intervention, between 1918 and 1921; and the second German invesion between 1941 and 1944. Ever since the wars of intervention ended the Russians have been expecting a new aggressive union of the _ capitalist Powers against them; this is the key to Russian policy. In the mid nineteenthirties they began to think they had been wrong, that Great’ Britain and France, being democracies, hdd some principles after all. Munich and the toleration of Fascist aggression in Spain remove this idea from their minds, bg be as UT even if the Russians supposed war to be inevitable, they would still not start it off. Conscious of their present Weakness, they believe that time is on their side. This expectation of future greatness is a very old element in Russian policy. Only the other day I was reading how the Tsar Nicholas II told the French ambassador in 1914 that 30 years later Russia would have a population of 300,000,000-the actual population of Russia in 1944 was something under 190,000,000. As Pope might have said, Russia "never is, but always to be great." Besides, not only are the Russians confident in their own future, they are equally confident that other countries, which have not got their economic sys-* tem, are geing to run into ever-increas-ing difficulties. This is the hard core of Russian policy: they logk to the future with confidence-whether they are right or not does not matter; all I am concerned with is the effect on their policy, Who dare contemplate the economic future of either Great Britain or the United States with unruffled confidence? If you’ accept this as the Russian opinion of economic development-as I said, it does not matter whether it is right or not--then you will understand both why Russian policy is not aggressive and why they are so fearful of heing attacked by others. War against Russia seems a remote speculation now: it may look very different in a year or two if the capitalist countries----and that means every country associated with the American economic system-if they are ravaged by unemployment, while the Soviet economic system goes from strength to strength. Such a war might give American capitalism a shot in the arm, but it would be the end of this country as a Great Power and indeed it would involve the destruction of most of our population. * % Ps T is the essence of our outlook that war between Russia‘and the West is not inevitable, and it is equally essential in our outlook that we can find a solution of our economic difficulties without embracing Soviet communism. But our faith-a bit shakily held, but faith

all the same-and our policy are not in line; that is why I believe that present British policy towards Russia is landing us in an impossible position. If war between America and Russia is inevitable, then it should be the object of British policy to keep out of it; if war between America and Russia is not inevitable, then the tendency towards military coordination between America and ourselves serves to make it more likely. To claim that we are not committed at present to the United States, to pretend that we treat the Russians as allies in any serious sense, to equate the atomic bomb with the spiritual way of life, this-if I may say so-is a demonstration of the British hyprocrisy which has sometimes in the past made us a byword on the continent of Europe. Applying our principles is not merely a matter of sincerity: it pays when you have principles as sotind as I believe our principles of political and social democracy to be. In fact, the advantages of cooperation between Russia and England are ‘so obvious that I am amazed that even the fog of a century of suspicion, thickened up by the smoke of ill-in-formed anti-Marxism, is enough to keep England and Russia apart. Why, co-op-eration would be the salvation of us both, and of a good deaf of the rest of the world as well, All the same-and this is a hard thing for me to have to say-I do not believe that close co-operation between Great Britain and Russia on either political or economic matters is possible in the near future. This I say as a matter of honesty and against all my wishes, The Potsdam meeting was a turning-point; till then the great Allies had been drawing gradually together, since then they have been falling apart. That was one of the moments of which Goethe speaks which, once lest, no eternity gives back. It will take perhaps not an eternity, but at any rate a long time, to overcome the suspicions which have been created on both- sides by the events of the last eighteen months. The need to co-operate exists; the will to co-operate does not. doubt me, ask any Briton serving many about the wall of distrust which he encounters whenever he tries to be friendly with the Russians; and listen also to his own critical and distrustful opinions on the Russians, I do not think this suspicion can be got rid of by either abuse or by flattery; concessions will not remove it, nor will firmness. It can only be removed by events, by the inexorable pressure’ of circumstances forcing us together, And all the timé the penalties which both countries pay for not co-operating are increasing. In 1938, before Munich, Great Britain and Russia could have worked together to stop Hitler; they did not and the penalty for both was the second German war. In 1945 co-operation with Russja would have led the way to a much -more rapid economic recovery in Russia, in Great Britain, and throughout the world. As it is, both countries, and much of the rest of the world as well, will have to pass through many harsh-experiences before they learn the lesson that Anglo-Russian co-operation is essential for economic stability and the political Balance of Power. But soon or late, events will force us to it; the only possible policy-if I have carried you with me so far-by which this country can remain prosperous and a Great Power, is the policy of the Anglo-Russian alliance,