A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHEN the news of the Russian invasion of Poland came one of my first thoughts was to ascertain what interpre- tation the accredited mouthpiece of Communism in this country, the Daily Worker, put on it. The result was illumi- nating, and, if you like to take it so, distinctly cheering. " SOVIET COUNTER-BLOW AGAINST NAZIS " the heading ran in heavy capitals across the page, while the leading article explained, with a confi- dence which contemns all doubt, that the peoples of " the Western Ukraine and Western Byelo-Russia," faced with the choice between Nazi tyranny and " freedom with the majority of their kith and kin in the Soviet Union," have been enabled, thanks to the Red Army, to choose the latter. By Tuesday the Daily Worker's tone was a little piano, but the Soviet Republic was still por- trayed as " an heroic liberator "—the ground for the employ- ment of that particular adjective being left to the imagination. I see that Trotsky, in a very interesting article which the Daily Express published on Monday, ascribes Russia's action to the fact that " Stalin fears Hitler," and therefore thinks it politic to join him in brigandage. " General Krivitsky," whose articles in the Saturday Evening Post caused a considerable stir in America and this country, put it a little differently. According to him, Stalin admired Hitler as a man who got things done—bloodlessly—and was always hankering to emulate him. * * * *
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