GROWING ANXIETY IN EUROPE

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 March 1946, Page 5

GROWING ANXIETY IN EUROPE

MOSCOW AND THE WEST BASIC DISTRUST CAUSING GRAVE SPLIT TALK OF “WHEN WAR COMES” (Rec. 9.55 a.m.) NEW YORK, March 3.

The New York Times’s Paris correspondent says it is quite apparent that the 'distrust between Moscow and the Western Allies is not only preventing true peace from developing, but is at present tending to rip apart the Continent’s great middle-of-the-road population, and herding much of it reluctantly into extreme Left and extreme Right political camps.

It is within such an uneasy atmosphere that dictatorships both of the Right like Franco's Spain and of the Left like Tito’s Jugoslavia and Hoxha’s Albania are thriving. Important emigre groups, whether they are Leftist like sections of the Spanish Republicans or Rightist like General Anders’s Polish Corps or -those, thousands of Jugoslavs in Italy and Germany loyal to King Peter’s dynasty, are openly talking of the need for organisation in order to benefit by swift action “when war comes.”

General de Gaulle, who sees nobody but his closest intimates these days, is spending his time in secluded reading. He has been telling some men he is convinced there will be war between the United States and Russia. Opinions of this sort, especially when emanating from wellknown personalities, rarely reach public print, but they typify the underlying atmosphere of mistrust which is rampant in Europe to-day, and which, also, is well known to the Russians as well as to the other Allied nations.

ANTI-BRITISHCAMPAIGN CONTINUED BY MOSCOW PRESS

(Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, March 3. Moscow newspapers continue the anti-British campaign in to-day’s issues, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The New Times printed a point-by-point criticism of British policy throughout the world. It is said that Britain was basing her policy on the principle of supporting “dying, reactionary regimes hated by mass peoples.” The newspaper discussed British policy in Indonesia, Greece, the ..Middle East, India, Spain, Italy, and Egypt, and said: “British foreign policy is a violation of the rights of small peoples and of the sovereignty of individual countries.” A woman writer in the Junior Pravda paints a gloomy picture of life in London. She says that new homes are not being built, old homes not repaired, and that employment is becoming more and more difficult to find. _ TRADE TACTICS IN BALKANS AMERICAN PRESSURE ON BLOC (Rec. noon^ NEW YORK, March 3. The Wall Street Journal’s Washington correspondent says that the United States is reported to have informed Russia that a loan will be made only if the Russians are willing to reverse their effort for a selfcontained economic bloc in east Europe and Asia. In other words, Russia will be required to join the international monetary fund ana bank and also adhere to the United States proposals for minimising international trade barriers. This means that Russia would also be required first to disclose her figures on gold and exchange holdings; secondly to reveal details of her foreign trade; thirdly to stabilise the rouble instead of getting arbitrary values to obtain advantages in Balkan trade; and, fourthly, to release her sattehtes from trade arrangements which directly or indirectly preclude them from trading outside the Russian sphere.. State Department officials indicate that there is some room for compromise, but not much. They may be willing to allow Russia special trade relationships wth countries on her border, but Russia would require to renounce any hope of doing in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and the Middle East what she has done in the Balkans. > The State Department recently asked to see the Balkan agreements to ascertain whether they were incompatible with the United States trade proposals. Officials question whether countries whose industries and agriculture are so similar will be able to manage without things customarily bought from Britain and the United States.