Allies' Ally?

Late in April Sir Richard Stafford Cripps arrived in London after a leisurely tour of the world--which included a sudden, secret, 9,000-mile flight from Chungking to Moscow and back. He went at once to the Chamberlain Government with a brief case full of electric dope which he wanted to sell. Russia, he said, was not too happy about its current arrangement of convenience with Germany. Great Britain had another chance to patch up at least a standoff agreement with the Soviet Union.

Since Sir Stafford had once been leader of the British Labor Party's intellectual left wing, Conservative Neville Chamberlain was not in the market for his wares. But Winston Churchill, definitely was. The risk-all Churchill Cabinet was in favor of getting any friends it could. Fortnight ago they dispatched Sir Stafford to Moscow via the Mediterranean.

There was the usual British hitch. Forgetting the Oriental sensitivity of Joseph Stalin, forgetting that the British trade mission to Moscow had failed last August largely because it was composed of underlings (while Germany sent Ribbentrop in person), the Government stupidly gave Sir Stafford the minor rank of Special Envoy.

Last week the Kremlin haughtily announced Russia would treat with nothing less than an Ambassador. The British Government hurriedly raised Sir Stafford to that rank, replacing Ambassador Sir William Seeds, who had been in London "on leave" since January. Sir Stafford hastened on to Moscow from Athens, hoping Stalin would overlook one more slight.

A thin, grave man who drinks no spirits, eats no meat. Sir Stafford is professionally a brilliant radical lawyer, privately "Red Squire" of the Cotswolds. He was the Labor Party's best mouthpiece until they expelled him in 1939 because he wanted to form a Labor Front. At that time the London Daily Express said that by his expulsion the Party was "blowing its brains out." In Russia, Sir Stafford will have done the Empire yeoman service if he can get what he hopes to get: 1) a trade agreement; 2) a military alliance--both with something more than milk teeth.

"Other Steps." Although the Red Army has spent the time since the Finnish War nursing a black eye and tucking in its shirttails, there are indications that Russia might be willing to help the Allies--at least to the extent of complete stoppage of vital exports to Germany. Russia would like to let the present belligerents wear each other out and then communize them. At present the war is too one-sided, might end too soon. It is to Russia's interest to prolong it by helping the Allies.

If Russia were actually to risk fighting Germany, one of the Red Army's principal theoretical advantages would be its hold on the Baltic States--threat to Germany's exposed northern flank. Last week Russia went in for some trumpery which looked very much like an excuse to get a better foothold in the spot nearest Germany: Lithuania. The little State was warned to discontinue trying to pry military information from Soviet soldiers. Five Russians were said to have been kidnapped at various times, gagged, blindfolded, thrown in cellars, starved for several days, beaten, questioned. One was alleged to have been killed. The Kremlin's warning expressed the hope that Lithuania would not oblige Russia to "take other steps."

Asset? The Allies were in no position last week to stop and consider whether Russia as an ally would be much of an asset on the books of war. Last week the Chicago Daily News and New York Post printed a series of articles by Leland Stowe, first reporter to go in & out of Russia since the Finnish War. There was no question in Reporter Stowe's mind: "Soviet Russia is in no condition either industrially or agriculturally to participate in a major war at the present time."

In a long catalogue of gloom, Reporter Stowe told how production of coal, iron, oil, steel, aluminum, machine tools, tractors, locomotives, automobiles had all fallen below 1940 quotas. Peasants were hungrier than they had been since the famine of 1933. Some farmers, he averred, trudge through woods and fields for 100 miles into Moscow to get bread for their villages. Railroad schedules were entirely disrupted, so that even such raw materials as were ready for shipment were not supplied to mills. An acute labor shortage, arising from mobilization, was drawing women into schools for tractor drivers and machinists. Russia had far from replaced the war materiel lost in Finland.

Lincoln Steffens once wrote after a visit to Russia: "I have been over into the future and it works." After his tour, Leland Stowe wrote: "I have seen the past--and it crawls."

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