" RUSSIA UNLIMITED "
SIR,—My chief objection to Mr. Winterton's article was the key sentence: " War will become possible only if we allow Russia to grow stronger. By physical and moral firmness, publicly exercised and fully explained, we could expect to prevent the growth of Russian power to a point where war could seem a worth-while undertaking." The implications of that are surely deaf enough. I am all for physical and moral firmness in the localised sense of Mr. Winterton's letter; but it will do nothing to prevent the growth of Russian power. And if Mr. Winterton abandons his idea that peace is dependent upon our stopping Russia from growing stronger, which we can only do by fighting her (that was the "muddle" I tried to indicate), well, that is something. On the other hand, Mr. Winterton's large statements about Russia's " expansionist policy," and non-co-operation with the West being her deliberate choice, still have the air of suicidal over-simplification. Even if I agreed wholly with what he says, which I do not, it might cross my mind that you could call a fifty-foot jump from a burning building an act of deliberate choice. I should at least ask myself the reason for this extraordinary choice, and whether nothing could be done—no, not " appeasement "- to change it. I know very well that many of us have been asking this for quite a long time; but the fact that we have not yet found the answer does not absolve us from the duty of going on trying. We must go on trying. Mr. Winterton talks as though a deadlock can be maintained for ever. He must know very well that it can't be. And that was what I had in mind in the last paragraph of my previous letter. The only useful thing we can do at the moment, as a nation, is to stand firm by our own character and resist the temptation to line ourselves up with one alien and extremist system against another. There can be no division of the world into two parts, and therefore no absolute deadlock,
so long as we do that.—Yours faithfully, EDWARD CRAN1CSHAW. Church House, Sandhurst.
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