GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA
SIR,—The Spectator has so fine a reputation for allowing both sides of the case to be heard that I should like to make some protest against the attitude of your leading article this week towards Russia. Let us admit, of course, that the Russians are neither saints nor exceptional altruists, species not very common after all amongst any nations or national leaders. But let us also take account of the facts. For some hundred and fifty years much of Poland, however wrongfully acquired and held, was Russian territory. It scarcely seems un- reasonable that if the Poles were going to lose their sovereignty over that territory (and clearly they were) the Russians should prefer to recover it rather than let it pass into the hands of someone else—and that someone till recently a formidable and relentless fde of their own. Very likely the Russians were glad of the chance to snatch it back ; but we must not ascribe motives too easily, for that is a game at which everyone can play. The point is that, whether glad or not, they could scarcely be expected to allow the Nazis to annex the wheat- fields of the Ukraine and the Carpathian oilfields, and there- after to appear on their 1919 frontier and do nothing about it. At no time should we allow the same Nazis to appear on the coasts of Holland or Belgium—perhaps a less serious juxta- position—without doing a good deal about it. But, I hear
someone say, why could not the Russians have fought for the integrity of Poland as we fought for the integrity of Belgium twenty-five years ago? But whose fault is it the, have not? Certainly not entirely theirs. After all, the Pole., must learn, as we all must learn by the time we reach maturity, the painful lesson that we cannot in this world has c it both ways. Are we not a little too inclined to forget just now that the Poles, though a superbly brave people, ha‘ e shown themselves to be a somewhat politically inunatur, people? And political maturity is, it seems, increasingly part of the price of survival in the modern world.
Finally, I would ask whether our own policy towards Russia has been such as to inspire us with the confidence we should all like to feel in those who lead us in so grave an extremity. How is it that neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary, both of whom have in the course of the past year or two visited the leaders of Germany and Italy as well, of course, as of France, has been able to establish contact with the leaders of Russia, who, whether as ally, enemy or neutral, was and is certain to play a part of transcendent importance in this struggle? For it was surely of paramount importance not merely to win the Russians to our side if we could, but still more to know beforehand precisely what was in the minds of their leaders and what the objectives were towards which their aspirations were directed at the present time. No doubt the Soviet chiefs are scarcely gentlemen. But it is the business of the leaders of a democracy to co-operate with all sorts and conditions of men ; and though it may be that MM. Stalin and Molotoff were demonstrably so unreliable or so exorbitant in their demands as to justify the manner in which they were treated from September last onwards, I suggest that the evidence for it has been insufficiently explained to the British public. Our war aims as I understand them are the abolition of Hitlerism and the restoration of Poland. There are not a few of us who subscribe to the first, but are uneasy about the second. This is not merely because of the intervention. of Russia ; though that undeniably invests it with a somewhat fantastic air. It is also and chiefly because we envisage a rather different Europe from the patchwork of sovereign States which we have hitherto known. Our ability to create that Europe seems the only price worth the sacrifice and confusion which now descends upon us. If the British people is seriously divided about this, then I think we fight today in vain. For we are divided about the very spirit of civilisation. But I do not believe we are so divided to any significant extent, only some- what—perhaps Mr. Runyon would say more than somewhat— inadequately led.—Yours faithfully, Jomt MARTIN. 37 Trinity Square, S.E. z.
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