The Waikato Times FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1939 RUSSIAN EXPANSION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20952, 3 November 1939, Page 4

The Waikato Times FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1939 RUSSIAN EXPANSION

Russia has learned much from the Nazis. Her demands from the Baltic States bear a remarkable resemblance to the tactics so successfully employed by Hitler to gain territorial and strategic advantages. The difference is that Germany is now one of the victims. But Germany cannot object; she must allow Russia a share of the spoils or forfeit her moral support. Thus Germany is making way for Russia on the shores of the Baltic sea and the Soviet is spreading its influence farther afield and causing the utmost consternation in Finland. Russia has made a series of demands with no better excuse than that the Soviet wishes to make its position more secure; that must be done at the expense of Finland.

Although the two parties have been negotiating on the demands for some time and had agreed to keep the terms strictly confidential, while the Finnish delegation was on its way back to Moscow to renew the talks. Russia has told the whole world exactly what Finland is expected to concede. Russia demands a readjustment of the border north of Leningrad, the use of an area near the entrance to the Gulf of Finland as a Soviet naval base, the exchange of certain islands in the gulf for territory in the Russian province of Korelia, the disarming of certain fortified zones along the frontier, a SovietFinnish non-aggression pact and the development of economic relations between the two countries.

Despite the fact that the demands require a sacrifice by Finland to improve the position of the Soviet, force is threatened. If the Finns continued in their failure to meet the Soviet’s requirements, Molotoff said, it would he “harmful to the cause of peace and to the Finns themselves.” Such threats come incongruously from a peaceloving and neutral Communistic State. Because Russia desires a thing she must have it, regardless of the rights and interests of her neighbours. That is the lesson the Soviet has learned from her new friends in Germany. It is an undesirable and impossible new element in international relations—the constant victimising of the weak by the strong. All these demands and threats are made in spite of the fact that Finland has Russia’s signature to the non-aggression pact of 1932, by which the Soviet Union undertook to respect, the frontiers fixed by the Peace Treaty of Dorpat, and to settle all differences peacefully. The validity of this agreement was in 1934 mutually extended until 1915. Has Russia as little respect for solemn treaties as Germany? Publication of matters under discussion has caused a sensation in i inland and almost resulted in the recall of the Finnish delegation. The talks are to be resumed under strained circumstances, and the whole of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries must be vitally interested in the results. The United States has been duly reprimanded by Molotoff lor presuming to suggest that the rights of Finland should be respected.