The Evening Star THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1946. RUSSIA’S INTENTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 25895, 12 September 1946, Page 6

The Evening Star THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1946. RUSSIA’S INTENTIONS.

Mr Donald Nelson, the trusted adviser of the late President Roosevelt, is convinced that Russia does not want war with the United States. Mr Nelson is a man of rare judgment; he was in Russia important missions during the war that is past. No one is more competent, therefore, to form an opinion, and when the opinion he has expressed is shared by General Eisenhower it is much more likely to be correct than incorrect. “ The common man of Russia,” said the general a few weeks ago, “ wants his Government to work it out so that we are friends.” That is also the wish of Generalissimo Stalin, as Mr Nelson judges him. The two statements are to be welcomed, because nothing makes war so likely as the belief on one side that the other side has hostile intentions; and, with regard to Russia, at least one prominent American, Mr William C. Bullitt, who was Ambassador to Moscow from 1933 to 1936, has recently done his best to inspire his countrymen with suck a belief. In a book that he has just had published, ‘ The Great Globe Itself,’ Mr Bullitt takes the line that undoubtedly the Soviet Government aims at world domination. “ Western Europe, the Middle East, and the British Empire will merely precede the American hemisphere as victims ” —that is, if all together do not take steps immediately to protect themselves. ' Mr Nelson may very well have had this ex-Ambassador’s analysis in mind in pronouncing his contrary judgment. “ Bill Bullitt,” as his successor calls him, preceded as Ambassador to Moscow Mr Joseph E. Davies, author of ‘ Mission to Moscow.’ Mr Davies got on well .with the Russians; it is made clear enough in his book that “ Bill Bullitt,” described by him there as a “ strong, forthright man.” did not. Mr Davies probably possessed more judgment than his predecessor, hut the view which all Westerners will prefer to accept has been argued most elaborately by a third American, Mr Brooks Atkinson, who returned quite recently after ten months’ service as correspondent of ‘'the ‘ New York Times’ in Moscow. In three articles which he has written for his paper Mr Atkinson seeks, most impressively, not only to record his own opinion that the Russians have no desire to provoke a war, but to explain those unattractive features in their character and outlook which cause them too easily to convey the opposite impression. As his argument is developed, war has no need to be a danger, out, in the ordinary sense, there can he no friendship with the Russian Government. That t Government is accepted by the Russians, who are “ admirable people,” but it is a totalitarian Government and its spirit is, fundamentally reactionary, as its attitude towards defeated and satellite nations and the behaviour of the (Red army in Manchuria suggest. It is a machine for generating power inside the Soviet Union and as far outside as possible, and all attempts to deal with it in terms of friendship are doomed to failure. “Although we are not enemies, we are not friends; and .the most we can hope for is an armed peace for the next few years.” It is taken for granted that other nations will use the same pressures as Russia exercises to protect themselves. To carry the argument further, the Russian rulers have led their people to a victory for which they give the smallest credit to allies. But they have many labours still to lay on the backs of their people before there can be recovery from the war. “ They are ' victims of their isolation. Although they have access to an enormous mass of information from abroad, they lack the experience to use it. Violence was their method in establishing themselves, and it is natural for them to apply it to external affairs. Incredible as it may seem, also, in view of the Soviet Union’s vast area, they have the same notion that the Germans had of encirclement—Mr Nelson agrees with this—and since their Communism in effect is a religious faith, they feel that .they are encircled by something like paganism. “ When the Soviet representatives meet ours at the conference table they are in effect meeting the last tottering princes of original sin; and they cannot give way to us without yielding divine principle.” At the same time, “ the Russians really do not want to lose friends throughout the world, nor build up resistance. _ They do not want to defy world opinion.” All that makes a complexity which demands nothing else so much as patience, combined with firmness, from the Allies. Only time can modify it.