Aggression Defined

At the Soviet Embassy in London last week seven states which border Russia signed a unique pact against aggression. Years ago nearly all nations signed the Briand-Kellogg Pact "renouncing war as an instrument of national policy"--but that defines nothing, least of all aggression, the primary act of war. For the first time in history aggression was defined in a binding treaty last week when Russia signed the pact with Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, Estonia and Latvia.

"There shall be recognized as an aggressor," declared this epochal pact, "that State which shall be the first to have committed one of the following actions:

"First--a declaration of war on another State.

"Second--invasion by armed forces of the territory of another State even without a declaration of war.

"Third--attack by its land, sea or air forces, even without declaration of war upon the territory, on the vessels or flying machines of another State.

"Fourth--a naval blockade of coasts or ports of another State.

"Fifth--support accorded armed bands which are organized on its territory and which shall have invaded the territory of another State; or refusal, in spite of the demand of the invaded State, to take on its own territory all steps in its power to deprive the bandits aforesaid of all aid or protection."

Next day this definition was signed all over again in a special regional pact between Russia, Turkey and the "Little Entente" (Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Jugoslavia). By many London observers Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, sponsor of the nonaggression treaties, was thought to loom as a new leader in Eastern Europe, the champion of the "Little Entente" and Poland against possible German aggression. In Warsaw, where every Pole hates & fears Adolf Hitler, relieved Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Josef Beck exclaimed: "This is a most important political act -- a great step toward organization of world peace!" Farsighted Soviet Foreign Commissar Litvinov was born in a part of Imperial Russia which now happens to be Polish. Several years ago, when Russia and Poland were publicly at daggers points, he began making overtures to a Pole who had been born on soil now part of the Soviet Union, famed August Zaleski. "The Briand of the North," then Foreign Minister of Poland. Almost furtively the two statesmen laid the basis of a diplomatic rapprochement, perhaps not desired at that time by either Dictator Stalin or Dictator Pilsudski. Last year M. Zaleski was replaced by Foreign Minister Beck, a "Pilsudski Colonel," reputed a swashbuckler. Momentarily the Polish-Russian rapprochement seemed to go glimmering. But Adolf Hitler, with his tirades against Marxism and his itch to have back the Polish Corridor, played straight into Comrade Litvinov's hands. Last week while Colonel Beck lavished congratulations on the roly-poly Russian, demoted "Briand of the North" Zaleski watched with quiet satisfaction from his vantage point as president of Warsaw's largest private bank. In Moscow the official Press purported to have inside Scandinavian information that Comrade Litvinov will win the next Nobel Peace Prize.

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