The Press TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1948. Attlee And Morrison On Russia

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25390, 13 January 1948, Page 6

The Press TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1948. Attlee And Morrison On Russia

It is not hard to understand why, in the earliest days of this year, first Mr Attlee and now Mr Morrison have spoken in the bluntest fashion about Russian policy. “ Bri- “ tain cannot be expected to lie “ down to untruthful, malicious pro- “ paganda attacks by the Russian “ Communists ”, Mr Morrison said in the speech reported yesterday. But these attacks are not new. The Politburo has turned them on and turned them off, through the Russian press and radio, during the war and since. Little has been said in reply. The official voices of Russian policy have been used at press conferences and at conference tables. Mr McNeil answered Mr Vyshinsky at the General Assembly, recently; and Mr Bevin and General Marshall were roused by Mr Molotov’s charges in London, last month, and sharply repudiated them. But these were the protests and counter-thrusts of the moment and the occasion, very different from such deliberate utterances, squarely assailing Russian policy and its methods, as have now been heard and have rarely if ever been heard before from British leaders of the highest status. If a reason is to be sought, it probably appears in the provocation afforded by Mr Molotov’s end-of-the-year version of events in London, a version directed first and foremost at the Germans and framed in terms, if possible, more injurious than he used at the conference table, because the misrepresentation of fact is the more clearly calculated. It is enough to illustrate this in two ways. First, Mr Molotov insisted that he alone, of the four had honestly and resolutely pursued German unity and to this end had proposed establishing at once a central German Government; but the others had shown that they wanted “ dis- “ integration, rather than unity, a “policy of separating the western “zones from the rest of Germany, “which has already resulted in the “ actual splitting of Germany ”. Germany was split when the Russians refused to restore the eastwest balance of its economy, no* when Britain and America decided, at long last, that they must act accordingly in the west. But to turn a single, large fact upside down like that is, perhaps, not so mischievous as to paint an entirely false picture of the situation behind the fact; and Mr Molotov’s picture of Bizonia was one of ’an area in which Anglo-American authorities, now “lording it on German terri- “ tory ”, never consult the Germans, “ prearrange ” bring German and American monopolists together in a big way, in a smaller way (which is not to remain small) enable “ foreign monopolists ” to buy up German factories “for a “ song and. generally, seek to make Western Germany “ a base “ for extending the influence “of American imperialism, in “ Europe ”, the technique being to “ dictate ” to European States the terms, economic and political, on which they are to receive Marshall Plan aid. This is good, detail by detail, and particularly good as it comes from Mr Molotov, whose Government has created, and owns, vast industrial monopolies in Eastern Germany and is now earnestly consulting the political wishes of the Germans by kicking out non-Com-munist leaders from the political parties to open the way for a oneparty Communist State. For the second point, Mr Bolotov, in this account of the conference, barely mentioned reparations; which he had made its dominant issue, not “asking” but “demanding”, as he said, 10,000,000,000 dollars in reparations. He was not to be asked for information about what Russia had already taken; his demand was simply to be approved; and on that condition, and that condition only, Russian consent to German unity would be effective. But by December 31, all this about reparations had become just one of “ certain “ trifles ”, which Mr Bevin and Mr Marshall had magnified. He himself had been quite ready, ail the time, to answer their questions, if they would make “ deeds, not words ”, their reparations policy. The regrettable fact is that Mr Molotov’s account of the matter is entirely false, false in proportions, false in substance and false in purpose.