Diplomatic Warmongering
Incidents involving the arrest of diplomatic and consular repre- sentatives stationed in COmmunist countries have now become so frequent that it is doubtful whether even the shadow of reasonable relations with those countries can .exist much longer. The utter disregard for law, or even ordinary decency, exemplified by the recent detention of American consular officials in Mukden, the arrest of the French consular official, M. Robineau, in Poland, and the attempted arrest (with violence) of other French repre- sentatives, cannot simply be met in kind. So long as it 'was simply a matter of various foreign representatives in Eastern Europe being declared unacceptable and returning home, it was possible to reply in kind by requesting the withdrawal of their opposite numbers in Western Europe Such a procedure is rather childish and its limits arc quickly reached. But it is not possible for civilised States to answer arbitrary arrest with arbitrary arrest, abuse with abuse, blackmail with blackmail, and torture with torture. They can only sense to expose their nationals to these dangers. And now that Communist activities in this sinister field are developing quickly and concertedly, in a manner reminiscent of the blockade of Berlin, it is becoming necessary for non-Communist Governments 'to take defensive measures with equal determination. It cannot be guaranteed that, as in Berlin, such measures will end with the Russians and their satellites returning, in their own interest, to a minimum standard of civilised behaviour. It may lead to a situation similar to that existing in the brutish mind of the Russian sentry in Berlin who last Friday killed out of hand an American sergeant who approached his post—a situation in which relations between East and West are reduced to an occasional shot across closed frontiers. But that is the situation which Communist policy is deliberately producing.
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