Two Jackals

Snarling at Russia's flanks, two jackals last week tried to muster courage to spring for the kill. Big Russia was bleeding from wounds made by Nazi fangs, but there was enough fight in the old bear to frighten Japan and Bulgaria. Benito Mussolini, who has got used to being called a jackal, must have grinned at their behavior.

Japan began feeling out Russian defenses along the 1,800-mile Manchukuo-Siberian border. Small frontier clashes sputtered all week. Having made an issue of Soviet mines laid in the Japan Sea, Japan claimed they were illegal floating mines, that two Japanese fishing boats had been sunk by them. Anticipating the enlargement of this or some other issue, Russia's Ambassador to Tokyo Constantin Smetanin sent his and other Soviet embassy wives home to the U.S.S.R.

There were other signs that Japan was licking her chops over Russia. In Washington the "exploratory conversations" between Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura slowed down, principally over Japan's unwillingness to commit herself against further adventures. Fresh from a tour of southern French Indo-China, Correspondent Leland Stowe reported that Japan held that country with too small forces for offensive operations to the south.

But Japan is cautious, even for a jackal, as the western powers might have discovered ten years ago. There was little likelihood that she would spring while long-range Soviet bombers remained within hopping distance of Tokyo, while an estimated 175 Soviet submarines lurked beneath the waters of Vladivostok and nearby harbors. Last week some of these submarines maneuvered close to Vladivostok, where even a nearsighted Japanese spy could see them.

Bulgaria no longer had freedom of choice as to when she would move. Nazi spokesmen, doing the talking for her, had a new term for her condition. They said Bulgaria had been "brought into a state of higher watchfulness."

Translated by the week's news, this meant that the Nazi squeeze to make Bulgaria help Germany against Russia had tightened. Berlin denied having four divisions (60,000 men) in Bulgaria. Bulgaria mobilized 400,000 troops. Bulgaria and Russia kept exchanging stiff notes, and Premier Bogdan Filoff announced that his country would strictly adhere to its policy of friendship and support for the Axis. These heavy troop concentrations were not merely for show.

One great obstacle to Adolf Hitler's objectives (Odessa, Sevastopol, the great Caucasian oilfields) is the mine-strewn Dardanelles, whose reduction by capture or persuasion would allow Axis warships to enter the Black Sea and attack the Russian Navy. Bulgaria's threat was as much against Turkey as it was against Russia directly.

One obstacle to Bulgaria's help against Russia was the pro-Russian sentiment of many Bulgarians. Already pro-Russian student riots, shootings, dynamitings were widely reported. But Adolf Hitler's purposes have never yet been thwarted by anything less than massed armies.

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