Evening star., 1944-08-20
Postwar Peace Plan Success
To Hinge on Russian Support
Disappointment Over Failure to Obtain Adequate
Security Pacts Before War to Influence
Farley Position
By Joseph II. Baird

Russia entered the League OF Nations
in 1934-after coldly regarding the
: Geneva body for years as an instrument
of the Western European powers to
maintain the status quo and keep COM
munism in check-because of the rising
power of Nazi Germany Maxim Lit
vinov, then Foreign Commissar, was
more Western minded than most of the
old Bolsheviks. He had reason to trust
his diplomatic sagacity and skill and
believed that Russia might find in the
League the means of keeping Germany
in check.
Hope Short-ived.
This hope was short-lived. Genevas
miserable failure to halt Italian ag-
gression in Ethiopia to prevent German
rearmament, and, finally, its ultimate
supineness in the face of Germanys
invasion of the Rhineland, showed Mos
COW plainly that its trust was misplaced.
Russia turned, meanwhile, to a system
of regional security pacts as safeguards
against Germany. In 1885 it negotiated
mutual assistance treaties with France
and Czechoslovakia and regional secur-
ity pacts with the Baltic states and Po-
land. The Munich settlement in the fall
of 1888 weakened Mascow's faith in its
alliance with France. According to
statement made to the writer later by
President Benes of Czechoslovakia, Rus
sia was ready to 60 to the aid of that
country if France would agree but Paris
yielded to German demands and Britain,
which had no treaty obligation, held
aloof.
In 1899, the Soviet Union made its
last effort for security through diplo-
matte bargains when it negotiated with
Great Britain to draw that country into
France e-Soviet-British alliance which
would guarantee the status quo in both
Eastern and Western Europe. Moscow.
however, insisted on establishing naval
bases in the three Baltic states, TO which
the British would not agree, holding it
inconsistent with their often affirmed
support of the sovereignty of small ma
tionS
Whereupon Moscow took the step
which led to the outbreak of the present
war-the negotiation of nonaggres-
sion pact with Germany. This action
still rankles many Americans and Brit
ons, although little has been said about
1t officially since Russia has been at
war with the Reich. But Stain no doubt
Justifles it by contending that he first
sought--and failed-to obtain security
through an alliance with the two prime
democratic powers of Europe.
Will Want Force.
AL that matters in the present dis
cuSsion is that Russia, from its own
point of view, sought collective secur-
ity against Germany and failed to find
it. Consequently it may be expected now
to insist on system in which decisive
action against an aggressor is not i'm
piled but adequately guaranteed-a sys-
tenn backed by adequate force and, in
the case of Eastern Europe and parts of
the Near East as we'll as Eastern Asia,
force primarily exercised by the Soviet
Union itself under international sane
ton.
Russian diplomacy is traditionally
secretive. Beyond its affirmation in the
Moscow four-power declaration of last
fall that it recognized the necessity of
establishing at the earliest practicable
date general international organiza-
ton based upon the principle of the
sovereign equality of all peace loving
states and open to membership by all
such states, large and small, for the main
tenance of international peace and Sc
curity," Russia has had little to say
about postwar security.
Two recent developments. however
may offer some clue to the policies Rus
sia may be expected to follow at the
Dumbarton Oaks conference They are
significant only to the extent that, seen
against a background of Soviet policy,
they offer some indication of Kremlin
thought.
One is the naming of Andrei A.
Gromyko, the Soviet Ambassador here
ISee PARLEY, Page C-3J