Genial Blackmail

Edgar Ansel Mowrer, political columnist and author (Germany Puts the Clock Back), is a left of center liberal who is no Russophobe. But he has been watching recent events in Europe with a deepening distaste. Last week, in a syndicated column (Press Alliance) headed "Accepting the Challenge," he tartly told the U.S. that the time had come to stand up to Russia at the next Big Three meeting (see U.S. AT WAR). Said Mowrer: "Marshal Joseph Stalin's hasty recognition of the Lublin Moscow-manufactured Polish Committee as the Provisional Government of Poland is a challenge flung not so much at the London Poles as in the teeth of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. It is the latest move in what is coming to look like a genial form of Soviet blackmail of its western allies.

"In substance the Soviet Vozhd* says this: 'We Russians intend to go on doing exactly as we please within the zone of the Red Armies whether you like it or not. The Soviet Union is going to rely primarily on good solid political and military measures and only secondarily on a possible United Nations Security organization. You cannot oppose us without endangering the common war effort.' "

The Arithmetic of Power. "In other words, what the Soviet Union is doing is seeking its security through augmentation of its national power regardless of the rights or interests of its allies. Those who stubbornly try to overlook this fact (when they do not approve it) seem a little weak at arithmetic. For the Polish group now unilaterally recognized by Moscow is the ninth of a series. The other political entities which the Soviet Union treats as 'governments,' in contrast to the U.S.A. and Britain, are the three Baltic states, the . . . administrations of Finland, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. If this process continues unchecked, we must, before this war ends, expect to see the Soviet Union set up further stooges in four more countries, namely, Austria, Slovakia, Iran and (why not?) Manchuria."

At the coming Big Three meeting, said Mowrer, President Roosevelt will have "another and perhaps final opportunity to steer United Nations' collaboration toward a policy acceptable to everybody and not merely to the Russians."

Recognitions, Sacrifices. "He might--for instance--make the following proposals:

"The U.S. and Britain will a) recognize the Soviet annexation of the former Baltic States and of eastern Poland minus Lvov; b) recognize Marshal Tito and certain other of the Soviet-sponsored governments; c) extend full economic assistance to the Soviet Union during and after the war. In exchange, the Soviet Union will consent to certain 'sacrifices':

"1) The immediate creation by the Three Powers of a Political Council consisting of the respective foreign secretaries, with exclusive jurisdiction over all political matters of common interest; 2) an agreement that all areas conquered or liberated by the United Nations are to remain open without restrictions to military and civil officials and to press representatives of all the United Nations; 3) a hands-off policy in liberated countries (which means cutting out the puppet stuff); 4) renunciation by the major powers of a veto right in cases before the coming Security Council in which they are the accused. . . .

"If F.D.R. will so talk, he is also sure of the support of the British, who--however bravely they may crow--do not relish the prospect of being left alone in Europe with the Soviets."

* Russian for leader--a title often accorded to Stalin.

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