Age of Unease

Since the days of purely dynastic conflicts, war’s primary aim has been to bring about a better condition of peace than that which prevailed prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

But “it is written that in no victory shall the ass’s kick be missing”; and in more recent times the aftermath of military success has invariably made it plain that with at least one partner in the war-time coalition, alliance has been no more than an opportunist veneer temporarily obscuring intractable enmity. So it was with Bulgaria vis-a-vis her Greek and Serbian allies in the Balkan War of 1912-13; so it was with Soviet Russia vis-à-vis the two great Western democracies throughout the war years from 1942 to 1945.

Quite early in the proceedings it was made abundantly clear that if there were any fruits of victory to be harvested, the Soviet Republic was ruthlessly determined to grab the lion’s share, whether the spoil was legitimate prize or not.

Nine countries which on September 1, 1939, had been free and independent sovereign states—Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and, finally, Czechoslovakia—were engulfed in the Kremlin’s insatiable maw. In effect, since the V.E.-day of 1945, Communist imperialism has annexed 489,300 square miles, containing a population of 109,833,000, and got its grip on a further 273,940 square miles, with a population of 24,355,000. This process of pitiless land piracy has been accompanied by strenuous and largely successful campaigns to propagandize the theoretical delights of Communism throughout free Europe and the Near and Far East. And prevailing conditions in so many parts of the world have made the task of the Communist propagandist ridiculously easy. Men’s ideas are conditioned by the conditions in which they live; and the Communists have scored their biggest successes by exploiting economic grievances. The airy promises that all will be well if the prevailing system of government be overthrown in favor of Communism are bound to have a compelling attraction for men living in circumstances that deny them a decent level of subsistence.

Of the 2,500,000,000 inhabitants of the world, it is calculated that some 650,000,000 habitually get plenty to eat; and a further 90,000,000 are above the subsistence level. But 1,760,000,000 “have to go hungry at least some part of the year”¹ It is a state of affairs out of which Sino-Soviet agitators make tremendous capital; and its remedy would drive a very large nail in the Communist coffin. But the problem of world nutrition is not easy to solve; for every three seconds there are two new arrivals in the world, a very large proportion of whom survive and demand to be fed.

Apart from the legions of the unproductive and therefore undernourished, there are the hordes of those who regard themselves as underprivileged because they have failed to “make a go” of their lives. For this sort of spiritual defeatist the tenets of Communism are bound to exert a tremendous appeal. It is so much more consoling to blame the prevailing system rather than oneself for one’s abysmal lack of success, for one’s inability to compel the world to accept one at one’s own inflated valuation. Soothed and flattered by the glib assurance that, given a proper chance—under a Communist system, of course!—and they would be bound to make their mark, the poor dupes fall an easy prey to a specious rigmarole which lays flattering unction to their souls while stoking the fires of the bitter, grudging ill-will in which they hold those whose efforts have met with a commensurate reward. It is always difficult to persuade a man that there is nothing immoral about another individual’s success so long as he himself is possessed of no more than the ability to envy it. Thus there must be a raging thirst for the hatred Communism distills so long as the chalice in which it is proffered bears the deliberately misleading imprint of “Injustice.”

Communism is not a creed, neither is it a workable technique of governance; for it possesses neither equity, compassion, nor tolerance. It is nothing more nor less than a foul cancer on the body politic which must ruthlessly be cut out before it destroys the living tissue on which it battens.

Of its very nature Communism is not a thing with which it is possible to palter. As with any other form of dictatorship, it cannot cry a halt; it must go on and on until it holds the whole world in thrall. Only by pitiless suppression can it ensure that not even one still small voice is left to question its validity: only by blindfolding its victims and stopping up their ears can it hope to shut off all knowledge of the world of free men that exists beyond the Iron Curtain it dare not let them penetrate.

Russian Communism is not only coldly barbarous but extremely resourceful in a manner completely baffling to Western minds. It is also exceedingly adroit in persuading others to burn their fingers in the fire for a very small share of the chestnuts. Hence the circumspection with which the men in the Kremlin have maneuvered behind the scenes of such armed try-outs as Korea, Malaya, and Indochina; in the first of which they enabled their catspaws to achieve a stalemate, while in the last-named their minions scored an outright victory. Since both trials of strength were regarded as test cases by various interested parties poised precariously on the fence, it is to be feared that the politicians’ insistence on “striking softly” and not really carrying the fight to the enemy has involved a large number of unprofitable casualties, much loss of “face,” and the moral certainty that the waverers will now incline to the enemy camp. It is another moral certainty that Bulganin and Mao-tse-tung will again embark on war-at- one-remove whenever the prospects seem equally promising.

In effect, all that has transpired over the past few years has formed part of the Kremlin’s short-term tactic, aimed at preserving the U.S.S.R. through a policy designed to diminish foreign pressure and avert aggression on the part of its “encircling enemies.” Its long-term strategy is, of course, to hasten the dissolution of the capitalist States by fomenting world unrest, subsidizing industrial sabotage in the form of strikes, and generally “softening-up” the pluto-democracies against the moment when the activation of world revolution is esteemed to have become a practical proposition.

Although a great number of people conspire, ostrich-like, to ignore the fact, such is the program which the proponents of Communist imperialism have revealed with a cynical candor only to be matched by the warnings Hitler wrote into Mein Kampf. “The State,” pronounced Stalin, in his Problems of Leninism, “is a machine in the hands of its ruling classes, for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies; . . . and the scientific concept of dictatorship means neither more nor less than unrestricted power, resting directly on force.” He returned to the theme in an illuminating passage in the same grossly neglected volume;

“We are living [he wrote] not merely in a State, but in a system of States, and it is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist interminably side by side with the imperialist States. Ultimately, one or other must conquer. Pending this development, a number of terrible clashes between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois States must inevitably occur.”

On this fixed belief the Kremlin founded a program which unequivocally laid it down that,

(a) The Communist aim is world revolution.

(b) The revolution must, if necessary, be brought about by force of arms.

(c) The revolution must be world-wide in character, using Russia as a base.

(d) At a suitable time the Soviet forces will cross the border of other States to assist their liberation.²

(e) No permanent peace between the Communist and non-Communist world is possible.

To accelerate the fulfillment of this program Lenin was careful to explain that “any ruse, cunning, unlawful method, evasion or concealment of the truth” could and must be indulged in, without qualm, in the interest of international Communism. It was a directive fully endorsed by Stalin, and one that has obviously been adopted by his successor, whatever aspect of “sweet reasonableness” it may suit his book temporarily to assume. Leopards do not change their spots; and the Soviet viewpoint was summed up once and for all in a lecture delivered by a noted professor of international law at Moscow University. “Russia,” he pronounced, “does not enter into the scheme of humanity, but exists for the purpose of giving the world an unforgettable lesson.”

And these are the kind of tovariches, forsooth, with whom certain of the more craven, gullible, and myopic of our political pundits assure us that we can enjoy “a peaceful coexistence”!

“O, be these juggling fiends no more believed.

That palter with us in a double sense;

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope.”

The only peaceful co-existence with a boa- constrictor is inside him.

From the steady pursuit of its program the Kremlin will never willingly deviate; although for a time it may be content to reverse the dictum of Clausewitz and regard policy as the pursuit of war by other means. So long as this procedure continues to pay a dividend it is unlikely that the Politburo— even if it attained to some degree of internal unity—would declare war, save in the following circumstances:

(a) If it deemed the moment ripe for world revolution, to be initiated by success in a trial of arms with the West; or

(b) If a rearmed Sovereign Western Germany attempted alone to regain her usurped Eastern territory by force; or

(c) As a desperate means of distracting attention from large-scale domestic unrest by a call to unity in the face of alleged anti- Soviet aggression, or

(d) Should the United States, wearying of the evasion and indetermination of European politics, embark on ‘an agonizing reappraisal’ of her policy, leading to the withdrawal of her armed forces from the European theatre.

So far as (a) is concerned, although no more could be looked for from the N.A.T.O. forces, as at present constituted, than a determined holding action, it is unlikely that the subsequent Russian build-up would outpace that of the Western allies or outmatch it in strength and technical resources. And this despite the Kremlin’s vaunt that it could put up to four hundred divisions into the field within thirty days of mobilization. For what is not always fully appreciated is that much of the human material for at least a proportion of these divisions would derive from the Satellites, who “support” the men of Moscow much as a rope supports the wretch it hangs.

Apart from which, thirty days and more would be required to decide the terrible first phase, the preliminary duel that would be fought out by the new nuclear weapons. The catastrophic horrors of this grim prelude are neither to be minimized nor contemplated irresolutely. It must be accepted that it would exact a particularly heavy toll of the Western Powers, with so much of their economy, with its attendant populations still largely concentrated in towns and cities. But it is a reasonable assumption that, with their superior stockpile and greater technical resources, the Allies could sustain that vital first phase longer, and therefore to better effect, than could their opponents; that, as General Twining has given assurance, “We could hurt them more than they could hurt us.”

The competition in terrorization being determined, as may confidently be believed, in favor of the West, and wide dispersion having ensured the survival of the fighting man and the factory workers who support him, the Allies would be faced with the task of prosecuting a war in which a well-balanced “mixed force,” to which all three Services contributed, would as always prove the determining factor. For in any future war, as in all past conflicts, “l’homme est l’instrument premier du combat.”

The Russians have pinned their faith, for their land campaigns, on their excellent tank army; with a “follow-up” of infantry “cannon-fodder” of extremely uneven quality. They have, however, omitted to provide anything at all adequate in the way of tank- transporters; so their armor would have either to travel by railways that are not too well sited strategically, or by road. But this last procedure entails a speedy and extravagant exhaustion of treads, with which— lacking the elaborate maintenance organization of the Western Powers—-the Soviet Tank Command would scarcely be in a position to cope.

In the air, Russian fighter opposition would be formidable and not easily mastered. But the Soviet pilots have neither the technique nor the “know-how” of strategic bombing, which is extremely complicated and efficiency in which only comes with long experience in war.³ The greatest danger would be of simultaneous “sneak” raids from many points of the compass, launched before any declaration of hostilities, and prepared to accept suicidal losses. Against this possibility, alertness and dispersion provide the only safeguards.

In a naval sense, the Russian emphasis is on submarines—of which the U.S.S.R. aim to produce 500 by 1957—and relatively light raiding craft.⁴ In effect, they propose to rely in the main on a “nuisance force.” But this, despite its numbers, would lack maturity and that instinctive sailor-craft which is only the outcome of a long seafaring tradition. Yet as Continental warfare would commit the Western Powers to oceanic lines of communication and supply, so large a submarine fleet, if properly handled, could prove a very real menace. The Allies’ possession of aircraft carriers—for which the Russian building program appears to make no provision—would go a good way to offset the enemy’s formidable array of underwater craft. For they are particularly adapted to submarine hunting and convoy protection. In addition, they could play a highly useful part in any surface action that might eventuate. For all that, there is still urgent need for more frigates, light cruisers, and escort carriers, of which there can never be a wasteful surplus.

Size the Russian forces do possess, and, in their submarines, tanks, and fighter aircraft, weapons whose potentiality it would be folly to underestimate. But size is not everything, as Goliath discovered when confronted by David. It is as well to bear in mind, however, that David triumphed because he had accurately summed up his adversary’s powers and had made himself master of the weapons he was confident would prove the most effective to employ against him.

So far as (b) is concerned, the eventual contribution of twelve Army Divisions by Germany, while rendering a Soviet military “walk over” a virtual impossibility, would eventually serve to bring the problem of the Eastern German’s future to the forefront of attention. That even a fully remilitarized German Federal Republic would embark on the forceful reclamation of her filched territories without the Western Powers’ approval and support can be regarded as unlikely in the extreme. The risks involved would be too great, since in the face of Western frowns there would be no outside source from which to obtain certain essential supplies. On the other hand, a fully armed Federal Republic would be in so strong a position with the immense advantage of Western backing that it is improbable that the Russians would prefer defiance to negotiation. For the men in the Kremlin have never forgotten that but for the last-minute miracle of Hitler’s blundering intervention, defeat would have been theirs on a scale that would have swept their ricketty regime into the limbo.

With regard to (d), it is inconceivable that more than a minority in the United States can be deluded into perceiving anything but a snare in the Kremlin’s proposal for “a general European security system.” Yet it is always possible that American policy makers might be persuaded to cut their overseas commitments out of sheer exasperation at the shifts and evasions of European politics in general and the petulance and chronic instability of France in particular. Nobody wants to take charge of the tiller when most of the crew do nothing but rock the boat.

America’s withdrawal from Europe, however, would fufill one of Russia’s primary and paramount long-term aims. For by so doing she would have thrown away all power to operate on the Soviet’s western flank, and made Russia a present of Continental Europe. Moreover, the United States would also deprive themselves of such aid in war as could otherwise be rendered by Germany, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey; while British help would be reduced to such limited enterprizes as could be animated from the Dominions. All this would immensely delay and render far more onerous that wholesale reconquest of Europe which would be a prerequisite of America’s permanent security, both military and economic. For no American citizen could sleep safely in his bed with the Continent under Soviet domination; while the loss of her European export trade would be bound to have a direfully depressive effect on America’s overall prosperity.

It is generally accepted that had American interest in European affairs been as keen in the years following the war of 1914-18 as it has shown itself in more recent times, the buccaneer progress of Adolf Hitler might well have been halted at the outset; with such truly beneficent consequences to the world that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them.

The present temptation to have done with the malodorous and messy washpot of Europe must be enormous. But for good or ill the free peoples of the world have reached the stage when, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “we must hang together, or we shall all hang separately.”

The Western Powers’ comprehensible dread of embarking on anything that would be likely to provoke a “shooting war” has made them hesitant to employ to the full the weapons of the “cold war” that lie at their disposal. But it is time to realize the fact that the days of cocktail diplomacy and the alternation of propaganda bellowings and apologetic gestures of appeasement are past. That sort of thing simply plays into Communist Russia’s hands, since no Westerner possesses the cardsharper’s absence of scruple to a sufficient degree to negotiate with an Asiatic with any hope of success.

It is upon the flaws and weaknesses in the Soviet regime itself that the real effort should be concentrated; and of the many chinks in its armor the resentment felt for their rulers and their repressive measures by large and widely diverse elements of the population is by far the most gaping—and would prove the most fruitful to exploit.

Unrest was ripe in Russia before the completion even of the first five-year-plan period; and according to the testimony of William Reswick, an ex-Communist who spent many years in the U.S.S.R., the era 1928-29 witnessed no less than one hundred and fifty rebellions against the regime. This led to an enormous increase in the special G.P.U. forces, acting as Stalin’s private army of suppression, and to a discontent none the less intense for being held in leash.

By 1933 the movement for revolt, hitherto mainly agrarian, had spread to industry. For in that year the American Communist, Andrew Smith—whose spell of self-sought employment in the Soviet Union had brought swift and bitter disillusion—was introduced to the heads of an underground organization which, as its leader assured him, was in touch with similar circles throughout the entire country.⁵ The same year witnessed the ever-effervescent Ukraine reach the point where strikes in the mines, sabotage on the sovhazi, and damage to the railroads had to be dealt with by drastic means—the death of Skrypnic, the Ukrainian Vice-President of the Council of People’s Commissars, being cynically attributed to remorseful suicide.

Even war failed to unify and consolidate national sentiment solidly in favor of the regime. If Hitler had not so dementedly mishandled the situation in the Ukraine, by turning loose Kock and Sauckel and their S.S. thugs to “discipline” a population which had hailed the Germans as their liberators, he would have found these turbulent, freedom-living people remarkably benevolent neutrals, if not—as is far more likely—eager and active allies. For it is not to be forgotten that during this selfsame period disgruntled Red Army Officers and men voluntarily surrendered to the Reich forces by the thousand.⁶

At the time of the German advance on Stalingrad there were insurrections among the Kalmucks, Tchnetnics, Tartars of the Nogai Steppes, and many of the Kuban Cossack clans. The Cossacks deliberately slaughtered their political commissars and put up a tremendous fight before they were overwhelmed, disarmed, and marched off to the Bykovsky-Peresov detention camp. Here they were subjected to the “Suvorov method” of dealing with rebels—N.C.O.’s and other ranks being lined up and one man in three being taken out and shot. In this way 15,000 of the insurrectionists were executed out of hand; their bodies being buried in the Caspian Sea at the mouth of the Volga.⁷ The Kalmucks were in successful rebellion from August to November, 1942. But they were eventually overborne; as were the insurrectionary metal workers of Kazan, five hundred of whom were arrested, many being shot and the remainder transported to Siberia. On the insubstantial charge of having collaborated with the Germans, the dangerously restless people of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, the Chechins, Ingushes, Balkars, and Karachins, were “disciplined” by the firing squad and with wholesale exile to Siberia.

Later, the revolts in East Germany of June-July, 1953, were on such a scale that one close observer has affirmed that “Eastern Germany would have thrown off the shackles of Moscow had the Red Army not been there to prevent it.”⁸ Even more recently, the full range of repressive brutality was required to quell the disturbances in the Ukraine, which sought to take advantage of the confusion attendant on the arrest and “liquidation” of the over-ambitious Lavrenti Beria—a living threat, so long as he walked the earth, to Malenkov’s precarious authority.

As may well be believed, the survivors of all these barbarously persecuted clans and communities are bitter irreconcilables, intractably hostile to the men of the Kremlin and all for which they stand. So are formidable elements in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Outside the confines of Russia and her satellites no less than thirteen organizations exist to keep the flame of resistance to Soviet imperialism steadily burning. Chief among them is the N.T.S. (’no Trudovi Soiuz), whose press and propaganda department not only smuggles its newspapers and pamphlets into the U.S.S.R. by the million, but has succeeded in establishing “cells” as far East as the Urals.⁹

The activities of this and other resistance movements are a cause of the greatest perturbation to the uneasy men of the Kremlin, as is witnessed by the fact that a special M.V.D. agent, Captain Nikolai Khoklov, was specifically detailed to proceed to Frankfurt and assassinate Georgi Sergevich Okolevich, the leader of N.T.S.

But even the firing squad and the assassin’s bullet cannot give the quietus to the acrid, disruptive vendetta which rages between the 10,000,000 of the “technical intelligentsia”—specialists, engineers, agronomists, teachers, and many Army Officers— and the 400,000 Communist party officials and the 2,000,000 members of the M.V.D., to whom the Communist State is an end in itself and their only means of livelihood.

It is impossible that the Politburo should be unaware of this seething undertow of feud and rebellion. It is equally inconceivable that they can remain insensitive to the undam- able stream of those who seek political asylum in the West. For the 72,000 who found sanctuary between January and July, 1954, are as representative of the irresistible urge toward freedom as are the successful efforts to overcome the almost insuperable obstacles in the way of escape¹⁰ which have brought 150,000 Red Army men across the dividing line since 1945.

This is the far from impregnable citadel from whose guardians the paladins of the “cold war” must strive to seize the initiative. Since well-devised propaganda constitutes one of their most effective weapons, it high time it was co-ordinated and based upon a common policy. The “Voice of America” does admirable work, as does the privately sponsored Radio Free Europe. But something is definitely wrong with the overall direction of the Western Powers’ political warfare when events like the death of Stalin and the East German riots are as cleverly exploited by the Americans as they are woodenly ignored by the British.

In “cold” war as in “hot,” the only answer to penetration is counter-penetration. And apart from such political windfalls as the above there is a wealth of material for propaganda to get its teeth into in the setbacks and humiliations which have marked the course the Kremlin had envisaged as a steady progression from one triumph to another.

The failure, for example, to intervene effectively in Spain. The failure of the Communist-inspired Greek civil war. The failure to retain a firm hold on Albania. The failure to secure domination over Yugoslavia, and the consequent loss of “face” by the Comin- form. The failure to retain Persian Azerbaijan and to gather Persia-proper into the fold. The failure of the Berlin blockade. The failure to gain Austria’s and East Germany’s adhesion and good-will. The failure to promote outright victory in Korea. The failure seriously to impede Europe’s economic recovery. The failure to sabotage N.A.T.O. The failure to secure partnership in the Ruhr authority. The failure to prevent agreement on the rearmament of Western Germany, and the failure to suppress the damaging revelations of the fugitive Khoklov and the recusant Petrov.

And China, who refuses so umbrageously to be patronized and play second fiddle—will Sino-Soviet interests always harmonize, or will the day come when they clash? On the testimony of that “old China hand” Dr. W. G. Goddard, the cry “China must not become a Russian colony,” is already on the lips of the more independent-minded students of Peking University.

For all his Communist professions, Mao-tse-tung is in outlook a ruthless, cold-blooded imperialist; and the restoration of the old Imperial “Middle Empire”—China, Manchuria, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet—is a project that takes high place in his program. Of this “heartland” Manchuria and Outer Mongolia are in the hands of the U.S.S.R., while in Sinkiang, Russian influence is predominant.¹¹Furthermore, with the Sino-Soviet pincers closing about India, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the final struggle between two voracious systems of Communist expansionism will be fought out under the shadow of the fortress-palace where, more than three and a half centuries ago, Akbar the Great dispensed even-handed justice to the people of Hindostan—a people still mindful of their ancient proverb, that “Conquerors always come over the hills.”

A tyranny can less afford a “palace revolution” than any other known form of governance. For a tyranny demands complete unity at the top or, like any other house divided against itself, it falls. But in the higher circles of the Politburo unity has been rent to tatters by the fears and suspicions begot of bitter and ruthlessly unscrupulous rivalries. Stalin ruled because he combined the functions of Premier and Secretary of the Party to crush opposition and play off one intrigue against another. These dual sources of power are now in separate hands, with Krushchev holding the Party Secretaryship and Malenkov appointed Premier.¹² In such circumstances the long duel they have fought to secure supreme power may well be verging on a crisis. Bulganin, the “five minutes soldier,” may attempt to swing the Red Army on Malenkov’s side; until, maybe, it suits him to stage his own bid for the throne. On the other hand, his promotion over the heads of such popular war heroes as Zhukov and Voroshilov may have completely alienated the Red Army’s sympathies for the Head of State and his pseudomorphous military protégé.¹³ Since Malenkov is known to be as unconscionable a careerist as was Stalin himself, such a member of the “Old Guard” as Molotov may very well join forces with Zhukov to oust the man who signalized his assumption of office by “purging” Beria, and who might easily go on to attempt the “liquidation” of all prominent “Stalinists” as an additional precaution.

With such men, living on borrowed time as they feverishly play out their sinister game of beggar-my-neighbor, a situation could develop at any moment which would throw the whole country into a state of turmoil and bewildered confusion. It is against such a moment that the resistance movements should be organized now, in every part of the country where defiance of the Kremlin has already shown itself or could be fostered. Secretly armed and in close touch with outside centers of direction and supply, the very fact that the dissidents were coordinated, had a common plan and a clear objective, would give them the advantage under conditions of public uproar and confusion, when everyone among the old rulers would either be snatching at personal power or seeking to avoid the consequences of having wielded it.

There can be little doubt that, properly timed and competently integrated, such a nation-wide uprising would bring the crazy, titubant Soviet regime crashing to the ground; with very little call on the outside world for physical aid. Yugoslavia has shown the way to successful revolt, and may well prove the stone to start the avalanche. For the restive, indomitable Volga clans alone number over 8,000,000, while the defiant Ukraine accounts for another 38,500,000; and there are many more of like kidney in Bessarabia and Transcarpathia, in the vast concentration camps, and in the satellite countries writhing under a bestial tyranny. But their organization prior to the event would be a sine-qua-non of victory.

There need be no scruple on the part of the Western Powers in circumspectly fostering such a project with all the means that lie open to them. Ideological wars—-the struggle for the souls of millions—cannot be fought with the nice punctilio of a mediaeval tourney. It is fatuous to abide by “Queensbury rules” when your opponent resorts to every foul trick known to ringcraft. And if ever there were a case of the end justifying the means it is to be found in the crusade to redeem the world from the Communist domination that so gravely threatens it.

Once Russia were restored to sanity it would not be long before the “Siamese twin” of Communist China reacted to such good purpose that terms could be arranged with her which would transform this hag-ridden age of unease into one of reasonable confidence and burgeoning hope.

At the moment the Western Powers are fighting no more than a holding action. But as the fate of the Greek and Byzantine empires so starkly demonstrated, great countries cannot survive indefinitely on the defensive. When a people ceases to ponder “Whom dare I hit, if I have to?” and begins to wonder “Who can hit me, if he wants to?”, it has surrendered the charter of its liberties.

No one wants to “get into the ‘hot’ war,” and the surest way of avoiding that dire calamity is to encourage the best elements in the Russian conglomerate to stage their own effort at redemption. That accomplished, “peaceful co-existence” with the regenerated people of Muscovy would be a practical and welcome proposition, rather than the thing of sinister portent that it is today.

These matters are not the concern of the politician only, but of everyone; and of no one more than the man in the Fighting Services. For to him the way in which these tremendous issues are handled has become, quite literally, a matter of life and death.