National Affairs: In a Red Hole

Aristocrats do not raise their voices, but the United States and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics are two self-made nations. Last week they felt no shame in engaging in an exchange of diplomatic billingsgate. Tossed back into President Roosevelt’s teeth with a blunt “protest declined” was his threat of “serious consequences” if Russia continued “flagrant violation” of its pledge not to connive at Red attempts to subvert the U. S. political and social order (see p. 21). Such phrases are followed in the diplomatic lexicon by the caution: “Smile when you say that.” In Washington practical politicians speculated rudely on which side, if any, of President Roosevelt’s face his famed smile was being worn.

As practical politicians, they took it for granted that the President’s original protest fortnight ago was meant for home consumption, if not for William Randolph Hearst. Supposedly the President had heard that George Dimitroff, the Red whom Nazis had failed to convict of burning the German Reichstag building, had, in effect, advised his comrades at the recent Moscow session of the Third International (TIME, July 29 et seq.) as follows: “The Communist Party should support the re-election of President Roosevelt because his defeat would enable forces opposing our forces to give us a body blow.”

Whether the words of Comrade Dimitroff were the spark that caused the White House to fulminate might be questioned but some facts could not. Two years ago Franklin Roosevelt, on his political honeymoon, claimed the recognition of Russia as his first diplomatic triumph. Soon thereafter the Soviet’s professed willingness to discuss a settlement of Russian debts to the U. S. proved to be a willingness only to discuss, not to settle. Hopes of a great Russian market for U. S. goods went glimmering when Russia set its terms: all the credit it wanted from the U. S. and eternity to pay.

In recent weeks the President has received many a note from U. S. Ambassador William Christian Bullitt in Moscow. These were routed to him through the State Department where Robert Francis Kelley, Chief of the Division of Eastern European Affairs, and Assistant Secretary of State R. Walton Moore, an amiable septuagenarian, attached an occasional aide-memoire which did much to sour the White House on U. S. S. R.

Franklin Roosevelt is not so guileless in the ways of politics that he could not foresee the domestic applause which his note would provoke. With hardly a dissent, Senators voiced their complete approval to the Press. Patrioteering organizations chimed in vigorously. It was a great success until the Soviet Government declined to be bluffed into keeping its pledge of non-interference with U. S. affairs. Ambassador Troyanovsky, talking with newshawks, expressed shock and surprise that the U. S. should expect the Soviet Government to keep its pledge; it was never intended to be kept; it was but a form of words; the demand that it be kept at face value was in itself by implication all but a breach of faith on the part of Franklin Roosevelt.

To Franklin Roosevelt the Soviet’s bold reply last week might well give pause. His note had been too strong to be easily laughed off. Put in an unexpected hole, he had either to break diplomatic relations with the U. S. S. R., which meant conceding the total failure of his one and only triumph in the field of foreign affairs, or back down, which meant incurring the displeasure of his home audience.

For four days the President and his diplomatic advisers meditated, then hit upon a scheme to get out of the Red hole. Since to write another note to Moscow would evoke another reply, thus continuing the controversy, Secretary Hull merely “issued a statement.” Sticking strictly to diplomatic billingsgate, he called the Russians liars: “That there has been a clean-cut disregard and disavowal of [its] pledge by the Soviet Government is obvious.” Then he added a threat: “If the Soviet Government pursues [its] policy . . . the friendly and official relations between the two countries cannot but be seriously impaired.”

The Hull statement had the triple advantage of satisfying the U. S. demand for strong language toward Russia, of depriving the U. S. S. R. of the chance to make a formal answer, of postponing the whole issue indefinitely.