Alliance and Alliance

Without the help of the U. S. S. R. the Stop Hitler movement of Great Britain and France is a shaky business. If war comes the heavily fortified French-German frontier would probably be stalemated and big land battles would be fought in the open stretches of Eastern Europe. Poland and Rumania, Britain's new allies, would not be able to withstand the full force of a German offensive without help. If Germany controlled the Baltic and Italy cut the Mediterranean in two, that help could come only from the Soviet Union.

Last September the British and French diplomatically elbowed the Soviet Union out of Western Europe when they failed to invite Soviet diplomats in to discuss the moves that led up to the British and French surrender of Czecho-Slovakia at Munich. The collective security policy of Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff thus collapsed, and Dictator Joseph Stalin was not long in announcing that henceforth the Soviets would concentrate on Asiatic policy, let Europe fight out its own destiny. But the Munich policy was short-lived. When it was reversed early this spring both Britain and France eagerly invited Dictator Stalin back into their parlor.

Last week the Soviets let it be known that henceforth they intended to be very coy about accepting invitations. Instead of signing up in a mere Stop Hitler bloc, Dictator Stalin instructed his diplomats to plug for an old-fashioned Grand Alliance which would be effective not only against Germany but against Japan, a much more likely enemy of the Soviet Union. Suspicious of British intentions, the Soviet Union wanted to be sure that no more appeasement was planned.

Nightmare. Few months ago nothing would have delighted the British Tories more than a head-on collision between Germany and Russia in which both would be knocked out. Now Dictator Stalin has the pleasure of anticipating an equally pleasing and more likely war between Germany and Italy on the one side, and France and Britain on the other, in which all four might well exhaust themselves.

Not only does Dictator Stalin insist upon an iron-clad alliance with Britain and France, but it is obvious that he has alternatives up his sleeve if the right kind of agreement is not forthcoming. One of these alternatives has become the nightmare of western diplomacy: the growing possibility of a Hitler-Stalin alliance. Such an alliance has been discussed in magazine articles, newspaper talk, books. Latest to make predictions is Dr. Peter F. Drucker, Austrian economist now living in the U. S., in a book titled The End of Economic Man.* To Dr. Drucker, Fascism is the stage reached after Communism has been proved an illusion. The enemy of Naziism is not Russian Communism; the "complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxist socialism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following."