Stalin for Peace?

A few hours before Soviet bombers started laying the eggs of a new war in Finland (see p. 23), Joseph Stalin, cock of the Kremlin walk, last week crowed a loud denial of something firmly believed by most foreigners in Moscow, not to speak of some natives. Correspondent G. E. R.

Gedye of the New York Times and others have announced the belief that Bolshevik policy today aims to keep all Europe at war until the day of "World Revolution." Last week this story was nailed by Communist No. 1. He took as his text reports carried by the French Havas News Agency that on Aug. 19 in Moscow, Dictator Stalin, addressing the Politburo or steering committee of the Communist Party, "expounded the idea that the war should last as long as possible so that the belligerents would become exhausted."

"This report is a lie," Mr. Stalin told the editor of Pravda ("Truth"), official Communist Party newsorgan. "But, however much the gentlemen of the Havas Agency may lie, they cannot deny that: First, it was not Germany who attacked France and England, but France and England who attacked Germany, assuming responsibility for the present war.

"Second, after the outbreak of hostilities Germany addressed France and England with peace proposals while the Soviet Union openly supported Germany's peace proposals because it believed and continues to believe that the earliest termination of the war would fundamentally alleviate the position of all countries and nations.

"Such are the facts. What can the cafe chantant politicians of the Havas Agency oppose to these facts?"

Not disclosed in Moscow was what the Dictator did tell his Politburo on Aug. 19, when he presumably explained why it was expedient for Russia to rebuff Anglo-French peace overtures and sign up with Germany on the eve of World War II. Havas had quoted Stalin as saying:

"If we sign the Alliance with England and France, Germany will have to ... seek a modus vivendi with the Western Powers which would be later very dangerous for us. If on the contrary we accept the Reich's offer of collaboration, the latter will not hesitate to crush Poland; England and France will be thereupon drawn fatally into war. There will result a thorough destruction of Western Europe, and remaining outside the conflict we can advantageously await our hour.

". . . If Germany wins, she will emerge from the war too exhausted to dream of an armed conflict against us. ... She will have . . . vast colonies . . . Comrades, war must burst out between Germany and the Anglo-French bloc! . , . We must accept the pact proposed by Germany and work to prolong the war the maximum possible."

According to Havas, Stalin also outlined to the Politburo on Aug. 19 the coming Soviet seizure of part of Poland and expansion in the Baltic, to be later followed if possible by taking Bessarabia from Rumania, establishing a Soviet zone of influence in Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria and finally attempting to drive a Russian corridor to the Adriatic Sea.

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