WAR INEVITABLE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 159, 18 April 1949, Page 3

WAR INEVITABLE

RUSSIAN OPINION TO-DAY

WASHINGTON, April 16,

The Russians still believed war with the West was inevitable, said General Walter Bedell Smith, former United States Ambassador to Moscow, in a broadcast interview. He said that everything the Communists did and said indicated that they did not believe they could get along with Capitalism.

General Bedell Smith said that while he did not believe the Russians had the atomic bomb in quantity production, he thought they had the “principle in their notebooks.” He added: “Soviet science is as good as any in the world.” He dismissed predictiqns that the Red Army could sweep through Europe in two or three weeks. The “Russian Army is a magnificent organisation,” he said, “but the difficulties of. supply in a long, rapid advance are enormous. The Russians have always fought well in defence of Mother Russia, but the Red Army has not been an aggressive army.” Czechoslovakia and Hungary signed a 20-year treaty of friendship and mutual aid against the “menacing revival of German imperialism,” says Reuter’s Prague correspondent. The treaty supplemented Czcchoslovagia’s existing alliances with the Soviet, Yugoslavia, Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. The Prague correspohdent of the British United Press says that the treaty completed the tight network of Eastern alliances which link Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia through two-way agreements. These agreements could bring the whole Eastern bloc into concerted action if any one of the seven nations claimed that it ivas threatened by aggression.