U.S. REACTIONS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25308, 7 October 1947, Page 7

U.S. REACTIONS

Official Comment Withheld

MOVE LINKED

WITH U.N. (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright! (Rec. II p.m.) NEW YORK, October 6. “Nerthet the White House nor the State Department would comment last night on the news from Moscow of the formation of a new Communist international organisation to fight ’United States imperialism,”’ says the W ashington correspondent of the “New York Times.” "In other quarters/ which are not official, itiwas speculated that there might be more behind the move than an attempt to knit the Communists of Europe more closely. Some observers think that the Kremlin maynow be preparing against the possibility that the Soviet Union will withdraw from the United Nations.” The “New York Herald Tribune," in a leading article, says: “The importance of the announcement lies not so much in what is said, but in the fact that now at last it has been said. "There is no change of policy in the programme that has been set forth. This is instead a statement of the policy that the Russians and their friends in other countries have been pursuing with growing single-minded-ness ever since the war ended; a statement that the world is being divided into two hostile camps, expressed so clearly that there is no longer any excuse for failing to recognise it as an established fact. “It is specifically set forth as the Russian response to the Truman Doc-

trine and the Marshall plan. . . . Bastion is thus raised against bastion—a course of events that should scarcely be considered Unexpected." Mr Louis Buffenz, fqrmer editor of the Communist "Daily Worker,’’ said in an interview that the new bureau was designed to further "a creeping blitzkrieg’’ against countries in Europe and Asia and to consolidate the strength of the §oviet dictators for possible military conflict against the United States. "Russia is not only waging a war of nerves against this nation, but the new bureau’s purpose is to strengthen the Communists' position in Europe and Asia by adding more satellites until Russia is in a position economically and militarily to challenge the United States.

"U.S. and Russia are Enemies” "The declaration -published in ‘Pravda’ is an open admission that the United States and Russia are enemies.” Mr Budenz, who left the Communist Party and embraced the Catholic faith,

is now Professor of Economics at Fordham University. . “Moscow’s announcement of the nine-nation Communist conference and its virtual declaration of political war against the United States are regarded by American officials 38 the most striking evidence of the continued working qf the international Communist movement the Russian;? have furnished since before the war,” says the Washington correspondent of the Associated Press. ' /

“The fact that such an announcement is made now is tfifcen in Washington as evidence of Moscow’s determination to wage an all-out campaign against the United States, its foreign policy, and its leaders, for the control of western Europe and probably other world strategic areas. “It is seen, too, as a deliberate manoeuvre of the Russians to put western European'nations on the spot, and force them to choose sides in a controversy in which Moscow evidently recognises no middle ground and no neutrality.”