BOTH NEED IT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 250, 22 October 1945, Page 5

BOTH NEED IT

ANGLO-SOVIET PACT British Social Policy May ■ Ease Tension LONDON, October 17. Until it becomes plainer what sort of Britain will emerge from the war, the Anglo-Soviet Alliance may creak and groan, but not break, because both nations need it too much, says Alaric Jacob, Daily Express correspondent in Moscow. Jacob discusses why Britain, with' a Socialist Government, is not j getting on better with Russia. He says that the Bolsheviks have long since performed what the Western Socialists have been promising for the last half-century and have not yet delivered. Jacob suggests that Western Socialists are often passionately visionary, but the Russians are equally convinced of their own moral righteousness—perhaps more so. Power Politics He admits that the Russians are playing power politics, but they are not alone, because all Great Powers must attract or repel lesser spheres. The germ of the complaint seems to be that Russia has exerted influence in quarters inconvenient to Britain. Jacob says the Russians have been throwing their weight about, but the German collapse left, a vacuum in Europe, which the Russians, being, there In overwhelming strength, filled. Eastern Europeans, knowing there were 350 Russian divisions in Germany, compared with 14 British and 60 American, and knowing little of Italy and nothing of Japan, did not understand the disparity. "The key to more British weight in Europe is resilience and quick recovery, after which our stocks will go up,"" says Jacob. He deprecates suggestions that Russia has sealed off eastern Europe, and denies that the Czechs, Poles and Yugoslavs are Russian puppets. He says that the present AngloAmerican absorption in democracy and free elections for Eastern Europe is putting the cart before the horse; the immediate necessity is feeding ; the starving.