Moscow Rejects Washington Mediation Offer

Northern Advocate, 2 December 1939, Page 7

Moscow Rejects Washington Mediation Offer

NEW YORK, November 30. President Roosevelt has despatched a message to Russia and Finland, urgently appealing to them not to bombard from the air civilian populations or unfortified cities.

His appeal is similar to the, ‘ one which he addressed to Germany and Poland on September 1,

The Soviet Government has indicated rejection of Mr Hull’s proposal extend the good offices of the United States.

The Russian Vice-Commissar of Foreign Affairs (M. Potemkin) told the American representative at Moscow when the offer was delivered that the Soviet Government could see no occasion at present for the good offices of the United States. “Burglar’s Impulse.” In an editorial article, the “New York Times” says: “The outer world is peculiarly shaken by this latest outrage—an invasion with no pretence of excuse beyond a burglar’s desire to possess the property of others. “One thing is clear—the victim of aggression will not be . the big casualty in this brazen war. ; “The great edifice that is crumbling,” the “New York* Times” adds, is built and is moving on slogans, pretensions, promises and dreams, the dreams of those looking to Moscow as the capital of the world proletariat. “Defeat Won’t Be Finland’s.” “Bombs raining on Finnish workers will finally exclude the mighty illusion. “The defeat will not be .Finland’s. “It will be the defeat of the Russian Revolution, and the power of "the Idea giving the Communist Internationale what dominion it had”. , The “New York Herald-Tribune” says; “What the United States can and should do is for the future to decide. “Americans were never so free from war excitement or more firmly resolved to maintain peace, so long as they safely can, but they must accept the truth that the forces of evil that the RussoGerman alliance has unleashed threaten not only democratic Europe, but the whole civilised world.

“However remote the United States hopes to remain from actual hostilities, it owes a duty to decent opinion to express horror and detestation of the latest totalitarian crime.”