AMERICANS - AND RUSSIA Sra,—May I express the hope that no
one will have been misled, by the prominence which you gave to it in your issue of Noirember 19th, into supposing that The New "New Deal" represents the -facts, or can even be regarded as a tenable if mistaken explanation of them ? It is unwise, no doubt, to base one's judgement of American politics upon a brief visit to the United States, and if I am emboldened to address you now it is not because I happened to be there during the election campaign. It is rather that Mr. Gunther Stein's article, which on the face of it is an interpretation of the American scene, is really the kind of cloud-cuckoo land travesty of international-politics which is characteristic of the speeches of Mr. Henry Wallace or of the editorial columns of Pravda. Mr. Stein's -thesis, if I may recapitulate it, is that the tension between Russia and the West is due to American rearmament ; that the purpose of American rearmament has been to support a .collapsing American economy ; that Mr. Truman's remarkable victory means the abandonment of rearmament in favour of "government-spending on constructive projects " ; and that, in consequence of the abandonment of the rearmament programme, "the Soviet Union may decide to meet the United States at least half-way in some new kind of political understanding." It is hardly necessary to point Out that the tension between Russia and the West anticipated American rearmament, it did not follow it ; that the rearmament programme, so far from being the salvation of industry in the United States, has been an additional embarrassment to it ; or that Mr. Truman has, in fact, shown not the least sign of abandoning rearmament. I can think of many reasons why Mr. Stein should write what he does. I can think of none, Sir, why you should print what he writes.—Yours, &c., RICHARD LAW.
House of Commons.
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