MENACE! ! Menace?

THE RED TRADE MENACE, famed travel diary of a U. S. reporter in Russia, won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize as "the best example of correspondence during the year" (TIME, May 11). This year Diarist Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, gunning again for the Pulitzer Prize, has stalked not through Russia but through Europe. His bag: Fighting the Red Trade Menace.

As this series of 24 daily articles closed in the New York Evening Post fellow news-stalkers warmly congratulated Mr. Knickerbocker but flayed the Post for attempting by sensational headlines to make his 24 neat rifle shots sound like a big gun cannonade. The essence of Fighting the Red Trade Menace is this: Mr. Knickerbocker proves conclusively that no nation or group of nations is putting up a real fight against Soviet competition or dumping.

Fight-Minded Finland. After stalking over all Europe, Mr. Knickerbocker found only one nation with the seesoo (guts) to fight Soviet traders, namely Finland.* In Helsingfors. the resolute Finnish populace was found to be building poison-gasproof rooms in private homes, factories, hotels and hospitals. The idea: Leningrad is only one hour by plane from Helsingfors. At any moment a Soviet air fleet may appear over the Finnish capital, loose gas bombs. On hotel tables at Helsingfors are round green receptacles for coins. A sign on each beseeches: "Give your bit for gas defense!"

Refreshing Ryti. Conscientious, meticulous. Mr. Knickerbocker states that he does not think Soviet Russia will attack in the near future either Finland or any other country. He discounts the Finnish gas scare 99%, but he hails Chairman Risto Ryti of the Bank of Finland as "most refreshing . . . after two months' experience of listening to the plaints and pleas of businessmen in other parts of Europe for governmental protection and international protection, but above all for protection by somebody else against Russian dumping."

Mr. Ryti's advice to businessmen is: "Protect yourselves. Undersell the Russians!"

Said he: "We [Finns] cannot withdraw from the [lumber] market. We must fight for it. But people say that we cannot compete with Russia owing to the economic methods employed by that country. We must, however, do so, and we can do so with hopes of success. We have many technical advantages. Our forests are better situated, our waterways are better and shorter, our men and horses are better provisioned, and the skill and efficiency of our workers are higher than those of the conscripted workers of Russia.

"Even Russia does not get her timber for nothing, and the deeper they cut the further they must go for their timber, and even if Russia cared nothing for making profit the fall in the price of timber comes at a very inconvenient time for her. Its effect on the success or nonsuccess of the Five-Year Plan can be great.

"Every fall in timber prices will affect Russia's trade balance and hinder the realization of the Five-Year Plan."

Ironically Mr. Knickerbocker notes that even fight-minded, lumber-growing Finland bought $2.000.000 worth of Soviet timber last year, although "this, it was explained to me, was nearly all bought by one man, who has been severely criticized for doing so."

Thus even Finland, in which alone Mr. Knickerbocker found the guts to fight, is not presenting a united fight-front to Soviet competition.

Is There a Menace? On his travels Mr. Knickerbocker saw such menacing sights as 14 kinds of Soviet spaghetti underselling the Italian product in Milan. He saw at Riga, Latvia, a Soviet-built Fordson tractor offered at a lower price than the genuine Fordson. But Mr. Knickerbocker did not conclude that either Henry Ford or the Italian spaghetti industry is "menaced."

Mr. Ford, as able, meticulous Mr. Knickerbocker learned, has protested to the Soviet Government, with the result that Soviet-built Fordsons will probably not be sold outside Russia--not at least until Mr. Ford has fulfilled his $30,000,000 contract with Moscow, thus strengthening by that much the Soviet Power. Thus if Henry Ford is potentially menaced by Soviet Russia, he is now asking as loud as he can for what he is going to get.

In Italy, Mr. Knickerbocker reported, the ordinary businessman has never heard of the Five-Year Plan. Il Ditce favors trade with Russia. He controls the Italian press.

In the Netherlands, too, Mr. Knickerbocker found shrewd Dutchmen only too content to buy whatever Russians will dump cheap.

Tory Hypocrites. In Great Britain, U. S. Reporter Knickerbocker reported hypocrisy: Tories squawking in the House of Commons about Soviet dumping of a few tons of candy, soap and "two shiploads of butter"; but the same Tory element eager to sell spinning and weaving machinery to Soviet Russia which, eventually, must depress further the sore-depressed textile industry of Lancashire. This depression Mr. Knickerbocker dramatized thus: in 1913 exports of British cotton piece goods exceeded seven billion square yards; last year they were less than two and one-half billion square yards!

Much of this drop was due of course to St. Gandhi's Indian boycott of British goods. Commander Locker -Lampson, British M. P. (Conservative) has said (without adducing a shadow of proof): "Russian rubles would be found in the pockets of Mr. Gandhi if he wore breeches like the rest of us!" Ably Mr. Knickerbocker notes that British Tories always thus hurl their anti-Soviet charges without proof, that Laborite MacDonald is one of the few statesmen to document what he says about Russia.

Conclusion. "All the important nations of Europe," Mr. Knickerbocker concludes, "have embraced 'the Red Trade Menace. . . .' America is scarcely more popular as a commercial force in Europe than is the Soviet Union, and if Europe were to achieve the incredible and unite it would unite as well against the United States as against Soviet Russia. . . .

"Not one great European nation or important taker of Soviet goods has put down an embargo, nor has this investigation revealed the slightest likelihood that they will do so. ... They have not put down embargoes because the majority interests and majority of population of Europe have not suffered but benefited .by cheap Soviet oil and timber. They have not done so because Soviet exports hit almost no country in its home markets but only in its foreign markets, over which it has no control."

As a final fillip to his series, Mr. Knickerbocker expresses confidence that Europe has abandoned or will abandon or has never tried such weapons as: 1) War; 2) Embargo; 3) Import restriction by license; 4) Setting up a Capitalist foreign trade monopoly to oppose the Soviet foreign trade monopoly.

"There remains," declares Pulitzer Prizer Knickerbocker, "Solution No. 5: unrestricted trade with the Soviet Union. This, in substance, is Europe's choice."

*"Seesoo, it was explained to me by a Finnish scholar," writes Mr. Knickerbocker." "is simply Finnish for that quality which the English call 'intestinal fortitude,' and Americans call 'guts.' In the Finnish scholar's terms it is 'the unconscious capital of a man after he has exhausted his conscious resources.' "

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