RUSSIA AND GERMANY

Patea Mail, 6 January 1941, Page 2

RUSSIA AND GERMANY

WHAT WILL RUSSIA DO? The supreme test of Soviet foreign policy will come when ■ Germany puts pressure op Turkey to let the German troops through' the Near East, writes Mr. William Henry Chamberlain in the Christian Science Monitor. ihc Germans at Constantinople would moan that Russia i s kept a prisoner in the Black Sea indefinitely. M. Stalin would then have to decide either to submit to this severe counter-check to liis ambitious, still hoping that ho might some dav retrieve what he had : lost through a Gorman collapse, or to take the risks of actively supporting Turkey in a policy of resistance. It is not unlikely that the Axis dictator a will try to buy M. Stalin’s complaisance for their plans in the Hear East by suggesting compensations in the Middle East, perhaps in Tran,- where Russian influence was paramount in the northern part of the country before the World War. Both Germany and Japan would be delighted if the Soviet Union could bo 4 diverted away both from Europe and from the Ear East, and induced to march against. India by wav of the mountain passes of Afghanistan. What M. Stalin will do wili depend on the following considerations, in the following order of importance: Maintenance of his own power; advancement of Russian ™tfonal and imperialist ambitions, and the spread ot Communism. :