BIG PROBLEM RUSSIA ANDNEIGHBOURS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 5, 7 January 1944, Page 5

BIG PROBLEM RUSSIA ANDNEIGHBOURS

"PRAVDA" AND MR. WILLKIE (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.) Rec. 9 a.m. NEW YORK, January 6. I "One of the most pressing immediate questions is Russia's intentions towards the border States," said Mr. Wendell Willkie in an article in the "New York Times." "Our principal objective must now be to persuade Russia to accept and give guarantees to a general organisation in which we are both members, rather than seek her protection by political or military control of the adjoining territories." Criticising the article, "Pravda" accused Mr. Willkie of double-dealing in American politics and attempting to create distrust of Russia among American voters, and added that the question of the Baltic States was an internal Russian one in which Mr. Willkie should not interfere. "Russia knows how to deal with i Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States without Mr. Willkie's help," it said. "Pravda's" attack on Mr. Willkie is interpreted in Washington as an emphatic warning to Britain and America to keep their hands off Poland and other European countries the borders of which the Red Army is now approaching, says a "New York Times"' correspondent. It is also seen as an indirect but significant notice that Russia intends to have a final say in matters affecting those countries. U.S. MAY LEAVE EUROPE. Diplomats point out that if this in- ; tention were carried out it would mean Soviet control of the balance of power in Europe. It is informally predicted that if the old European system. of buffer States is revived—a system which might be restored if Russia becomes dominant in parts of Finland, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, and Poland—the United States might react | violently away from European politics ! after the war. { It is no secret that Washington did not like the Russo-Czech pact, which is regarded as out of sympathy with the general system of international security supported by Britain, America, Russia, and China, and envisaged by the conferences at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran.