European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE death of President Roosevelt removes one of the three great architects of Allied military victory, but it will not affect the war program. That has been worked out in full, final detail as to strategy, organization, and command. As one of the framers of the peace, however, his loss is grave indeed. This program exists only in broad outline, the great compromises are still to be made.

The power pattern of the Western world (and of the Pacific-Asian world as well) has been completely altered during the past half-dozen years. Russia, despite staggering damage to her life and property, has succeeded in balancing many losses in her war-torn areas with vast development of her interior economy and resources behind the Urals. Unlike England, Russia has not had to slow down or halt this effort. Whereas Britain’s vitality has been consumed to a dangerous degree, the war appears to have unlocked hitherto latent energies in the Soviet Union.

For the evidence, we have only to study the reports on construction in Russia. Twenty new factories for the production of prefabricated houses have gone into operation there this present spring. Amazing speed and energy are being displayed, while the war continues, in the rebuilding of Russian towns and cities, in the repair of farm machinery, in the replacement of ruined industrial installations. An enormous electric power dam, blown up by the Germans, is being reconstructed so rapidly that Russian engineers promise delivery of approximately a billion kilowatts by mid-December.

The new world order

In contrast with the state of affairs existing in 1939, the order of world power stands today as follows: the United States, Russia, Great Britain. The New Statesman and Nation of London, in a moment of possibly exaggerated gloom, suggested that Great Britain might do better, henceforth, if she should strive to be a first-class second-rate power!

Such wry statements do not reflect the intentions of the three or four hundred personages who shape and control the imperial policy of Britain. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, in his address to the Scottish Conservatives, has made this startlingly clear. He plumped for full resumption of Great Britain’s role, and boldly emphasized her determination to “oppose any power which seeks to dominate the continent of Europe.”

Teamed up with the two remaining great Old World powers, both of which are deeply versed in the history of the European polity, the United States strives to collaborate with them for the attainment of the common goal of peace. Unhappily, however, America is not yet fully at home in her new political role. Though this handicap does not halt progress, it frequently makes progress erratic.

President Roosevelt’s view, that no world structure in the political realm can serve usefully unless economic agreements are available to shore up its foundations, is not shared by pressure groups blindly dedicated to their own advantage. For this reason, carefully devised plans for monetary stability and reconstruction languish in Congress, and efforts to frame international agreements on oil, airways, rubber, shipping, and other basic matters in the contemporary world make little headway.

Great power, unsure in historical judgment, and wielded with imperfect skill, often stumbles and succumbs to the lures of a beguiling expediency. It strives to conceal its dilemmas. Not by accident is this war the censor’s paradise.

The uncertainties which becloud the relationships of the Big Three stem from the destruction of the power arrangement of 1939, from the revolutionary nature of the war, and from the diplomatic experimentalism of the United States. The consequences are merely suggested by uneasy arguments over the mechanics of the proposed world organization. They are far more dangerously revealed in the grim duel between our two allies, Great Britain and Soviet Russia, throughout Southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East.

Finland does not collide

Britain and Russia do not collide in Northeastern Europe. Finland, since her capitulation to the Soviet Union and the advance of the Red armies along the Arctic and Baltic coasts, has ceased to represent any threat to her Russian neighbor. Her people and government, as the elections last month attest, intend to fulfill the terms of the armistice scrupulously.

While the Communists hold a veto power over the new regime, the outstanding characteristic of Moscow’s attitude toward the Finns, before and since the elections, has been one of forbearance and nonintervention. Only at one point did Russia emphasize her point of view during a campaign otherwise entirely free of intrusion: she frowned upon the proposal of the Finnish Social Democratic Party (which is largely anti-Russian) that banks and industries should be nationalized. That, said Moscow, would jeopardize reparations payments!

In Finland, as well as in Rumania, the Russians are making no bones about their intention of dealing moderately with finance and industry. They favor retention of capitalism where it best serves the economic needs of the country. This leniency does not imply toleration of fascist-minded tycoons, or indifference toward collaborators with Germany.

The elections in Finland have established an approximate balance between the political right and left. While this result reflects a strengthening of radical sentiment among the voters, nevertheless the innate conservatism of the bulk of the Finnish people continues to have full expression. The purge of fascists and collaborators from public office, and the punishment of identified war criminals, are now being undertaken by the Helsinki regime in response to Russian armistice terms; but it seems likely that moderation and justice will march together in this instance.

Poland the sore spot

Where there is no threat to Russian security, Russian policy with border states is broadly cooperative. But Poland, unlike Finland, represents a danger spot. Time and again that nation, willingly or unwillingly, has been an invasion road. Where a threat to their security exists, which is as formidably documented from the past as the threat from Poland, the Russians are adamant. The support they have thrown behind the Lublin Provisional Government expresses in the political realm the same determination that is indicated in the territorial aspects of the problem.

To the endemic hostility of the Polish aristocracy, Moscow’s reply is to encourage the Lublin regime’s ruthless application of the policy of redistribution of landed estates in small farms to the peasantry, to support plans for the creation of cooperatives, and to display no mercy toward political dissent.

Russia’s Polish policy, while commanding the official approval of London in its broader outlines, nevertheless creates thorny political difficulties for Mr. Churchill among his Conservative following in Parliament — a fact duly noted in Moscow. The moment the spotlight shifts from Poland southwards, toward Rumania and the Balkans, deep and wide opposition in policies emerges between the two great European allies. Lately, after months of concealment, the friction has spread southeastward to Turkey, southward through the Near East, and eastward to Iran.

Tussle in the Middle East

Behind Russia’s policy in the area stretching from the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean to Persia is a grim determination to safeguard herself against any future attack by way of the Danube valley and the Black Sea or by way of the vital land flank which covers approaches to the oil fields of the lower Caucasus. Behind British policy in these same regions looms an equal determination to safeguard the imperial lifeline which runs from Gibraltar via Suez to the Indian Ocean by water, and overland through Turkey, the Arab States, and Persia to India. In all these regions the diplomatic tussle between Moscow and London gathers intensity.

The two powers are waging this struggle in each instance for the same reason: security. The collapse of the Axis has created political vacuums: and when two strong nations stand poised on the edges of such vacuums, they soon find themselves moving in from opposite sides — to an eventual collision.

The situation is made more acute if the two happen, as in this instance, to entertain widely different views as to the nature of a war in which they find themselves jointly engaged. In Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary (prospectively also in Austria) Russian arms have brought in their wake very similar policies.

These policies stand in precise opposition to those of the British under Mr. Churchill. Russia identifies fascism as her mortal enemy — and means it. Accordingly, her aim is not merely to defeat a military foe; her purpose also is to extirpate fascism root and branch, on the theory that fascism represents the political dynamism which finds expression in Axis aggression. Russia, in short, recognizes the revolutionary implications of the present war.

The official British policy, as exemplified in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and above all in Greece, displays far more tolerance of the reactionary elements that have supported the fascist cause these past ten years in Europe. Wherever the Churchill government has professed to discover revolutionary trends, it has moved swiftly to crush them. The speed marking these operations has been in direct ratio to the importance of the country concerned as a bastion of the British imperial position.

The friendly relations established between the resistance armies in Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito and the patriot forces of Greece, which promised well for peace in that quarter and even a possible participation in a Balkan federation, have deteriorated under pressure of revived Greek chauvinism. These countries are now attacking each other over the radio. Demonstrations in Greece in favor of war with Bulgaria echo through tight British censorship.

The old game of power politics, which converts small nations into pawns in a game for advantage, is operating full blast. The great powers, Mr. Eden wisely insists, must not “bully” the small ones. Honestly applied, that policy would serve well the regeneration of Europe and a firm eventual peace. But when will it begin?

Rumanian shenanigans

Rumania, which has been giving off muffled explosions these past three months, provides another typical example of what’s up. There the regime of Premier Radescu crashed in midwinter when its leader attempted to thwart the demands of the landless peasants for agrarian reforms, incited the wrath of labor by threatening to bar unions from participation in politics, and enraged the genuine anti-Nazis by blocking the business of eliminating fascists and trying traitors. As the climax, he incautiously revealed the source of his inspiration for all this by citing the British policy in Greece as his model.

The shenanigans which accompanied the debate included attempted murder and brought prompt warnings from Moscow that “uproar would not be tolerated” on the communications lines of the Red armies in the Balkans (a direct dig at the use of British tanks in Belgium to block demonstrations against the now defunct Pierlot regime). Next the Kremlin’s trouble-shooter, Vice Premier Vishinsky (who was Public Prosecutor at the unforgotten Moscow “Purge Trials” during the middle thirties), descended upon Bucharest. Premier Radescu, overthrown by public demonstrations, sought refuge in the British Legation. He is still there.

To agitated inquiries from London and Washington about these untoward events, the reply was that tranquillity must be maintained in the rear of the Russian armies and that Radescu could not keep public order — a rather obvious truth. The new Rumanian government, a combination of party groups ranging from the left to the right, and under strong Communist influence, is pushing the execution of its pledges.

Redistribution of all large estates excepting those belonging to the Church is under way to provide the peasantry with small farms. Cooperatives are being organized. The expulsion of fascists from public office and the punishment of traitors and collaborators are proceeding. Full recognition of the right of labor organizations to share in the affairs of government has been granted. A program of social reform is taking shape for the national legislature.

Turkey gets a warning

The thrust and parry between Russia and Great Britain in the Balkans extends to Bulgaria and is growing livelier in Hungary. The crushing of German power in Austria promises to produce still another trouble spot. Meantime, Russia’s abrupt denunciation of the twenty-year-old treaty of friendship between herself and Turkey, and the radio campaign of criticism she is directing at Ankara, serve warning upon the slippery Turks that too intimate an association with the British in Asia Minor may store up trouble for Turkey.

The sudden caution evinced by the Turks as a result of this unexpected development shows that they appreciate the power of the Russian armies in the Balkans, the significance of a common land frontier with the Soviet Union in the east, and Russia’s domination of the Black Sea. Is the old issue of control of the Dardanelles about to be dusted off again by Moscow? A sharp and unguarded warning issued to Russia by the London Economist on this point suggests alarm and contains a plain hint that Britain’s dominant position in the Eastern Mediterranean is involved. Time will unfold that story.

Meanwhile a tug of war seems to be in prospect to see who will command the support of the emerging Arab Federation in the Near East. The recent multiplication of Russian diplomatic missions throughout that region has been duly noted by watchful Cairo. So has admiration of Russian military might. Is Britain’s recent suggestion that the United States take over part of the job of settling differences in Palestine an appeal for reinforcements?