Communists Challenged

Since the Comintern at Moscow has long been doing its best to foment what Communists call "The World Revolution of the World Proletariat," most Russians have found it easy to believe Soviet news stories that all non-Communist governments are leagued and conspiring against Moscow. The Russian peasant or proletarian reasons that any Capitalist states which have not teamed up against their avowed enemy, the Comintern, must be managed by simpletons, and that therefore Soviet propagandists must be right in endlessly repeating that the Capitalist states have so teamed up. Last week this Soviet journalistic axiom cracked. When not all Capitalist countries but only two or three--namely, Germany, Japan and possibly Italy--were reliably disclosed last week to have made a pact against the Moscow Comintern, Soviet statesmen suddenly boiled over with an indignation they could scarcely have felt had they believed their own Communist propaganda* all these years. Instead of facing a great league of enemies, Russia faced only a pact of two or three--yet Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff lost his temper completely in Moscow last week and abandoned those niceties of diplomatic procedure which ordinarily he likes to observe.

Japan has been against Russia ever since anyone can remember, but the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire were all ready to sign once again last week their periodic treaty whereby Japanese pay for the privilege of fishing in the Far East waters of the Soviet (TIME, March 5, 1934). With the 1936 version of this document agreed to by both countries and an hour appointed for its signature in Moscow last week, abruptly Comrade Litvinoff refused to sign. Moreover, last week when a foreigner was sentenced to death for the first time in the history of Soviet propaganda trials (TIME, Aug. 31), protests by the German Embassy in behalf of this foreigner (a German engineer named Stickling obscurely condemned for "sabotage" in Siberia) were handed back by Comrade Litvinoff although later accepted.

Neither Comrade Litvinoff nor anyone else outside of German, Japanese and possibly Italian officialdom knew precisely what it was the mere rumor of which had so upset Moscow. Because dispatches from Japan are always severely censored, the best indication seemed to be that Japanese official censors passed last week dispatches in which Tokyo correspondents claimed to have heard 1) that Emperor Hirohito had before him for signature a German-Japanese form of declaration approved Nov. 13 by a committee of the Japanese Privy Council and Nov. 16 by the full Council; 2) that this declaration will constitute "not a military alliance but a defensive pact of a novel kind;" and 3) that it is not directed against the Soviet Union but against the Comintern at Moscow, which heads the international federation of Communist Parties devoted to fomenting the World Revolution of the World Proletariat.

If even the above was definitely known, it was all that was known, but more than enough to provoke the Times of London. Editor Geoffrey Dawson has for months been conducting with great persuasiveness a pro-German, though not ardently pro-Nazi, editorial policy in the Times. Last week he apparently discovered where this was leading him and, shocked & grieved, angrily attempted to turn back. Although a high Japanese source denied that Italy was in on the arrangement with Japan as yet, the Times assumed that Italy will "approve publicly of Japan's violation of her international obligations, while Japan does the same by her," and savagely thundered: "if there is not honor, there is at least mutual admiration among thieves."

Swinging around so far as to assume a pro-Soviet position, the conservative Times declared : "It was Russia who proffered and Japan who rejected the idea of a non-aggression pact. ... It is true that Japan's phobia of Communism is, if any thing, even more profound and sincere than Germany's, but there was no need to jeopardize the cause of world peace. . . . Japan may well regret the day when she became a chip of the new bloc. . . . Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, but to share the pillow with a couple of dictators is to court insomnia."

In Berlin these symptoms that Editor Dawson was upset last week, and presumably also his pro-German bigwig English friends, promptly upset intuitive Adolf Hitler. Der Fuehrer, according to his entourage, pondered the Times editorial deeply and decided that what die Englischen Herrschajten wanted was to hush up the new accord as though it were Mrs. Simpson. According to dead-serious officials of the Wilhelmstrasse, obliging Herr Hitler is willing either never to announce the contents of the Japanese-German accord, thus returning to pre-War secret diplomacy with a vengeance; or at least to keep it secret until his close friend Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador to the Court of St. James, can find out in what form the English would like this secret disclosed. As the week advanced, Tokyo sources declared more and more positively that "so far as Japan is concerned, Italy is not a party to our agreement with Germany," and Editor Dawson's simile of Emperor Hirohito laying his sublime head uneasily between those of two Dictators appeared increasingly farfetched. What seemed to be the truth was that Italy had joined Germany last week in an effort to crush Communism and Anarchism in Spain, while at the same time Japan teamed up with Germany against the larger threat of a Moscow-fomented "World Revolution of the World Proletariat."

*It has gradually worn so thin that next week Russia is slated to adopt a new Constitution geared to a less lurid Communist philosophy, but the Comintern, according to its charter, still exists to foment the same old World Revolution under new and more palatable slogans.

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