Litvinoff's Problem

Russia has her paws full fighting Germany. And since she is doing a good job of it, she had better not take on more than she can handle by trying also to fight Japan. Nobody knows it better than Maxim Litvinoff. This was the news that he last week conveyed by implication to the U.S. people.

Litvinoff was the Foreign Commissar who fell from power when Stalin, changing policy, was preparing to sign the German-Russian Pact. (He was the spokesman for cooperation with the democracies who came back when Stalin needed democratic cooperation; the logical choice for Ambassador to Washington.) Ambassador Litvinoff's first appearance in Washington should have been the first great move toward reconciling a suspicious Russia with a suspicious U.S.

But when the Ambassador presented his credentials it was in a diplomatic situation as tangled as the plot of a Dostoevski novel. The U.S. was at war with Japan (but not then with Germany) and Russia was at war with Germany (but not with Japan). Japan (with Germany and Italy) had sworn never to make a separate peace with the U.S. and Great Britain (but no such pledge was made about Russia). The U.S. declaration of war against Germany and Italy eased the Ambassador's embarrassment somewhat. But in the first hours of the war, anxious U.S. citizens created another problem by asking: What will Russia do?

No U.S. official joined in the clamor. President Roosevelt said smoothly that supplies to Russia would continue. It came with bad grace for U.S. citizens--many of whom had opposed aid to Russia before--to censure Russia for not jumping on Japan, merely because Japan had jumped on the U.S.

But Ambassador Litvinoff had to say something. The Ambassador made his country's position clear. Diplomatically, it was a masterly job. Practically, it said that Russia would take no action against Japan--now. Litvinoff's chief points:

> Hitler's advance in Russia was made at a stupendous cost to him. Russia would have welcomed a second front then. "We never complained, however, we never made any demands on our ally, England."

> Stories that Hitler had decided to halt in Russia "need not be taken at all seriously....We intend to beat back and smash up the hordes of Hitler till they are completely destroyed."

> The war is one war: "All that is going on is the result of a vast conspiracy by a handful of international gangsters calling themselves Axis powers....We now have, in various parts of the world, separate sectors of one great battlefield.... We are proud and happy to count ourselves the allies of your great country."

Ambassador Litvinoff put the situation very neatly. And in making it plain that Russia would not open up an Eastern Front, he also gave a good reason: "Hitler is the chief culprit in all the present wars, the inspirer of the whole gang, and the destruction of Hitler would mean the end of them all." The U.S. and Britain, now fighting the whole gang, understood and agreed.

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