Who Was Inconsistent?

Grey River Argus, 20 August 1942, Page 7

Who Was Inconsistent?

“It was perhaps not the Reds, but the muddle-class intellectuals who were inconsistent.... It seems.. .• a self-contradiction on the part of those many Left-wing intellectuals who did claim first-hand knowledge of the Soviet Union, and poured out a spate of pro-Soviet books on t e world, only suddenly to decide, aftei the diplomatic events of August 1939 (Russo-German non-aggression pact), that they had been entirely misled, and began to write of munazism’ and cry for a crusade against all they once apparently cherished. Plainly, their shift was illogical, unless a mere shift in the

tactics of Soviet foreign policy—which continues to have the same strategic aim—can change the internal physical facts of the U.S.S.R. on which their former enthusiasm presumably was based.” —Edgar Snow, in “Scorched Earth.”