CLOSER UNDERSTANDING NEEDED.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 39, 16 February 1943, Page 4

CLOSER UNDERSTANDING NEEDED.

The "Spectator" maintains that formal agreements must be supplemented —as they are being supplemented—by unclouded understanding between the peoples, and adds: "It calls for conscious and deliberate effort, for those traditions of the Anglo-Saxon and Russian peoples are too different for full comprehension between them to be easily achieved. Certain trends in each country have been over-em-phasised in the other. The contrast between Russian Communism and British Capitalism is not the last word in definition and distinction. Even if it were so when this war began, it certainly is not so today." It is noted in more than one quarter that certain interesting changes are occurring in the Red Army. Since the German invasion it has been the subject of universal admiration, and the names of new marshals and generals have been given the widest publicity —a completely new feature to Russia. It has been observed that the grey colour of anonymity which hung over Russian life, at least after the purges, seems to have been dissipated, and that investitures again take place at the Kremlin, while the decision to restore gay epaulettes which had not been worn since 1917, being regarded as symbols of Tsarism, has been declared by one commentator as "most astonishing and significant." The "Economist" c-.mments that the war undoubtedly ha;; produced new shades of ideology in Russia " which may bear upon her attitude towards problems of post-war co-operation with the Allies. It is noted that the war medals of Suvorov and Kutuzov have been ranked above the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner in the army, and also that in the army the reforms, discipline, and army regulations of Peter the Great have been recalled as guiding principles.