18 Sep, 1939
NY Times
It is altogether probable that the Russian invasion of Poland, just at the moment when that country has been laid waste and rendered all but helpless, reveals at least part of the secret understanding that lay behind the German-Russian non-aggression pact. This, no doubt, is the deal that Hitler and Stalin arranged. This was the price for which Stalin was ready to betray the French and British with whom he had ostensibly been negotiating for an anti-Nazi alliance. Germany having killed the prey, Soviet Russia will seize that part of the carcass that Germany cannot use. It will play the noble role of hyena to the German lion.
This gross betrayal of the professions that Soviet Russia has been making for years is being defended in the manner with which the world has now grown sickeningly familiar. Because Poland has “virtually ceased to exist,” Russia is free to break every treaty with it. The Soviet Government deems it its “sacred duty” to “extend the hand of assistance” to its dear brother Ukrainians and brother white Russians. The Polish Government is denounced as having been “rotten” anyway, and of having “persecuted” its minorities—in contrast, one supposes, to the well-known kindliness with which Soviet Russia treats minority opinion. The technique is established: just before you pillage your neighbor and kill his wife and children, you must denounce him as a scoundrel.
What further agreements and developments lie behind the ominous non-aggression pact—whether, for example, a re-partition of Poland is to be followed by a partition of Rumania or a more extended drive on the Balkan states, either to annex them or to reduce them to vassalage—we shall doubtless learn soon enough. It is possible that Russia does not intend to participate in warfare if she can help it, but merely to sit on her re-acquired territories or new possessions and hold them. In any case the outlook is hopeless for Poland and dark for England and France. The latter are more threatened in Asia by Japan, and Germany is in a position to get valuable supplies—in particular, some of the oil that her motorized warfare so desperately needs.
But this virtual alliance of Germany and Russia, at least for temporary ends, will certainly not work altogether against the democracies. As Germany and Russia draw closer together, as buffer states shrink or disappear, the mutual distrust between the two Governments must grow. It is not likely that Hitler has changed the opinion he expressed in “Mein Kampf,” that “The present rulers of Russia do not at all think of entering an alliance sincerely or of keeping one.” He must still believe that the Russian leaders combine “a rare mixture of bestial horror with an inconceivable gift of lying,” and the Russian leaders doubtless reciprocate the compliment. In such conditions no real or durable alliance is probable. The two Governments can act together only in dividing helpless intervening nations between them, while quarrels over the division are always possible.
The most immediate effect is the complete moral and “ideological” change which this working alliance must bring. It clears the air. It will sweep illusions from millions of minds. For at least the last fifteen years communism and fascism have lived on each other. Each has declared itself to be the other’s exact antithesis and only formidable enemy. Millions of Germans stomached Hitler in the belief that he was the only hope, as he himself repeatedly boasted, to save them from communism. He framed his anti-Comintern pacts and posed before the world as communism’s arch-foe. Though Stalin has always held western democracy in contempt, he created and kept alive for years the pretense of an alliance with it against fascism; his satellites, tools and dupes in other countries formed their “popular fronts” and their leagues against war and fascism. All these pretenses and lies have collapsed together. The most squirming apologists now will not be able to convince any one but idiots of their sincerity. At last the issue stands clear. Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism.
The world will now understand that the only real “ideological” issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand and despotism, terror and war on the other.”
