STALIN’S BARGAIN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 71, 21 February 1940, Page 9

STALIN’S BARGAIN.

FREE HAND IN BALTIC. POLICY CHANGE TRACED. ‘(British Official M'ireless.) Received February 2L 9.45 a.m. RUGBY, Feb. 20. A pamphlet entitled “Finland Criminal Conspiracy of Stalin and Hitler,” is published by the Labour Party to-day. Tracing the history of Russian relations with her neighbours oil the Baltic, the pamphlet recalls M. Litvinov’s declaration made at the time tho non-aggression pacts were concluded that “the Soviet State to whom the ideas of chauvinism, nationalism, and racial or national prejudices. are completely alien, desires no conquests, no expansion and no extension of territory.” It contrasts this with M. Molotov s speech in October, 1939, in which the whole ideological basis of the foreign policy was completely jettisoned. The pamphlet then lists States or parts of States which Stalin and Hitler “brought within despotic protection by force and threat of foice. regardless of life, liberty, happiness. The number of persons acquired by these means totals over sixty millions.” ■ , Speaking of the bargain made between these dictators the pamphlet says: “It was not through any lapse of’ memory, that Hitler omitted to mention Finland in his speech ol October 6. The act of omission was a public whisper in the ear ol Stalin that Finland was no longer on the map at the. Reich Chancellery. This was the diplomatic manner of expressing the fact that the two gangsters had agreed to work on different pitches, or, more precisely, that the occupation of the Baltic States and Finland was part of the price which Stalin had exacted from Hitler for the betrayal of the peace of the world through the conclusion of the Soviet-German pacts.

M. Litvinov was formerly Commissar for Foreign Affairs, his succession by M. Molotov being interpreted in some quarters as indicative of the change in Soviet policy.