GATHERING CLOUDS

Evening Star, Issue 25067, 7 January 1944, Page 3

GATHERING CLOUDS

STATUS OF SMALL STATES MOSCOW NEWSPAPER GIVES WARNING (Rec. 8 a.m.) NEW YORK, Jan. 6. " 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 in a general organisation in which we are both members rather than seek her protection by political and military control of adjoining territories."

An article in the Moscow newspaper ' Pravda' accuses Mr Willkie of double-dealing in American politics, and of attempting to create distrust of Russia among American voters. The paper stated that the question of the Baltic States was an internal Russian one, in which Mr Willkie should not interfere." " Russia," said the paper, " knows how to deal with Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States without Mr Willkie's help." . ' 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 whose borders 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. ' . Diplomats point out that if the intention is carried out it would mean that the Soviet Union would control the balance of power in Europe. In an informal way it is predicted that if the old European system of buffer States is revived —a system which might be restored if Russia becomes dominant iii parts of Finland, the Baltic States, Czecho-Slovakia, and Poland—the United States might react violently away from European politics after the It is no secret that Washington did not like the Russo-Czech pact which it regarded as out of sympathy .with the overall system of international security supported by Britain, America, Russia, and China, and envisaged by the conferences at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran.