Evening star., 1950-01-21
The Pattern of Enmity


Our difficulties with Bulgaria-which
will lead to complete diplomatic break
unless the Soviet puppet regime at Sofia
withdraws its demand for the recall of
United States Minister Donald r. Heath
cannot accurately be considered as
something limited to our relationship with
a single country. The significance of the
the trouble, far from being isolated, fits
in very neatly with pattern of action
that has become characteristic, within
recent months, of the whole dark world
behind the Iron Curtain. 2
This pattern has taken the general form
of policy that seems deliberately cal
culated to make it virtually impossible
for self-respecting Western nations to
have decent relations with Russia and its
satellites. Directed chiefly against the
United States as the leading non-Soviet
power. it is made up of systematic affronts,
persistent pinpricks, crude nbels, vile
propaganda, studied obstructionism, un-
precedented mistreatment of diplomatic
officials, and other rude attitudes and
abominable actions shockingly at odds
with the long established standards of
civilized international intercourse
What has been happening in Bulgaria
is certainly too much like what has been
happening elsewhere-in both Red Europe
and Red Asia Ito be dismissed as mere
coincidence. In Poland, in Romania, in
Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Northern
Korea, in Communist China-indeed, in
every place Subservient to the Kremlin-
the treatment accorded the West and its
representatives, particularly in the case of
the United States, is so alike in essence
that there is little or no reason to doubt
that the source of it all, the inspirer, the
guide, the signal-caller, the activator, is
the hate-breeding, peace blocking dicta-
torship of the Soviet Union.
This charge can be made with consider
able certainty. Tatterdemalion puppets
like the Bulgarian Reds Or problem ridden
new satellite regimes like that at Peiping
would not be going out of their way to
ALLEVIATE America and the rest of the free
world without having been inspired or
ordered to do so by the Kremlin. In the
lands behind the Iron Curtain the MARION
ettes-unless they want to face perils like
Tito's-do not act independently. They
move, this way or that, only when their
Moscow masters pull the strings Accord
ingly, what they are now doing may be
regarded as part and parcel of an over
all policy as Muscovite in its origin as the
current Russian boycott of the United
Nations.
Taken together with that boycott
which cannot continue indefinitely with
out destroying the U. N.-the conduct of
Bulgaria and the other satellites obviously
adds up to pattern of consciously hostile
acts aimed at promoting enmity instead
of friendship. The time-honored, decent
standards of diplomacy have been all but
abandoned The Vests ambassadors,
ministers, consuls and lesser representa-
tives, if not subjected to direct physical
violence, are cribbed, cabined, confined,
branded as spies, insulted, Jailed, or other
wise so abused and reviled as to frustrate
every effort they try to make to serve the
ends of international good will and
understanding.
Why is this so? What do the Russians
hope to gain from it? How are they
helping themselves by widening the gulf
between their world and ours and sparing
no effort to isolate the two completely
from each other? The questions can be
stated much more easily than they can be
answered. But though they constitute
a mystery for Western minds, we can be
pretty sure that the men of the Kremlin
are themselves not mystified Battling as
the whole business may be to us, they
undoubtedly have become engaged in it
deliberately, with the expectation that it
will be good for them and bad for U.S.
In any case, the one thing clear in this
rather ominous puzzle Is that the Russians
are doing an effective job in sabotaging
the cause of international friendship and
peace. The actions of Bulgaria and the
other satellites are merely the peripheral
expressions of policy whose roots are
bedded deep in Moscow Sooner or later,
If that policy remains unchanged, the
Soviet Union will in effect be asking for
full diplomatic hreakswith the free world.
And that in turn will be an invitation
to eventual war. The outlook does not seem
any less bleak than that.
Governor Rattle md Sfrikee