RUSSIA TO PLAY LONE HAND?

Southland Times, Issue 23648, 25 October 1938, Page 5

RUSSIA TO PLAY LONE HAND?

FOREIGN POLICY AS RESULT OF CRISIS FRIENDSHIP WITH GERMANY NOT IMPOSSIBLE NEW YORK, October 11. Henceforth Russia will play a lone hand in Europe, declares the bestknown correspondent in Moscow—Mr Walter Duranty, of The New York Times. Mr Duranty says: “The Russians shared Hitler’s conviction that Britain and France would not fight Germany for Czechoslovakia, or for any reason except a direct attack upon themselves. “Russia has now no potential allies and faces a strong attack from Germany after Hitler has been reinforced by acquiring Rumanian oil and grain. “Russia today realizes the failure of her League and collective security policy, but is not afraid of Germany. She will retire upon herself and develop her own resources. There will be an intensification of anti-foreign sentiment and a cruel campaign against' all not accepting the Kremlin’s voice as the voice of God.

“Numerically, the dissidents are comparatively few among Russia’s 180,000,000. Stalin knows that Russia’s youth is on his side. “The possibility remains of a Russian and German rapprochement—co-opera-tion instead of war. There is no obstacle to the Russo-German friendship which Bismarck so strongly advocated except Hitler’s fanatical fury against Jewish Bolshevism.

“But Hitler can change his mind, and Stalin has shot more Jews in two years than Germany ever killed. “If Hitler declines to imitate Napoleon by wasting his armies in a fight against winter and typhus and prefers AlsaceLorraine’s iron and coal to the distant riches of the Donetz basin, there is no reason to believe that Russia will refuse to collaborate with Germany or shed tears over the ultimate fate of the British Empire and of France.”