REFERENCE TO GOVERNMENT

Southland Times, Issue 23992, 6 December 1939, Page 5

REFERENCE TO GOVERNMENT

Kremlin’s Refusal To Negotiate

(United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright)

(Received December 5, 10.30 p.m.) MOSCOW, December 5. The radio announced that M. Molotov, replying to the Swedish Minister, M. Winter, said that the Soviet did not recognize “this so-called Government” (the constitutional Finnish Government) and for this reason the Kremlin could not negotiate with it. It is reported that the Soviet Government is refusing to allow the Finnish Minister and his wife to leave “until the last Russian has left Finland.”

The Moscow correspondent of The New York Times, G. E. R. Gedye, says the impression in diplomatic circles is that there is a curious hesitancy in the Soviet attitude towards the war. Facts might justify the assumption that high quarters are divided. It may well be true that aggressive Leningrad influences have been trying to persuade the dictator (M. Josef Stalin) to move more rapidly, further than had been thought wise. Certainly progress of the, Finnish affair has shown no evi-* dence of the caution previously characterizing M. Stalin’s foreign policy. Admittedly this view directly contradicts that obtaining in Moscow communist circles, which approve the invasion and regard the programme of December 1 as a revelation of the new turn of Soviet policy.