That remarkable weekly journal, the Saturday Evening Past, of Philadelphia,
with its circulation of, I think, three millions, is publishing a curious series of articles by General Krivitsky, who was chief of the Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe from 1935-1937. The first discusses, from the inside, Russian intervention in Spain, and the second the great Red Army purge, of which the writer claims to be the only survivor in the group of generals to which he belonged. The third and most important (so far as any of them is to be adjudged of real importance) is entitled " Stalin Appeases Hitler," and rests on the thesis that the fundamental aim of Stalin's policy for the last five years has been an understanding with Hitler—an aim unswervingly pursued in spite of the series of rebuffs received from Berch- tesgaden. General Krivitsky alleges the existence of a secret German-Japanese agreement, concluded late in 1936, and " negotiated behind the smoke-screen of the anti-Comintern Pact," and adds that it is to implement this at a strategic point that Hitler's henchman, Capt. Wiedemann, has been appointed to the apparently secondary post of Consul-General at San Francisco. He brings his theory right up-to-date in a paragraph regarding Stalin's great speech to the Party Col- gress on March loth of this year. " The world," says General Krivitsky, " was astounded by Stalin's friendly over- tures to Herr Hitler. Three days later it was dumbfounded to find Stalin's speech followed by Hitler's move in dismem- bering Czecho-Slovakia." All of which may be considered sense or nonsense according to the estimate put on the writer's reliability. On that I can get no information.
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