In times when the month-by-month march of events is of such a character as to give little comfort to the hopes of men in general, and perhaps of Jews in particular, it is the thankless but necessary task of the writer of this department to winnow out the facts from the welter of belief, propaganda, actuality, and emotion that constitutes present-day public information and opinion. Maurice J. Goldbloom has had many years of experience as a news analyst, and brings to his work of appraisal here a rich store of knowledge in modern history and international affairs. The judgments expressed here are, of course, those of the writer, and in no sense represent or reflect official policy.
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End of the Mandate
On May 15, 1948, Great Britain surrendered the mandate over Palestine which she had held for a quarter of a century. On the same day, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel. Eleven minutes after it had officially come into being, the new state received de facto—though not yet de jure—recognition from the United States of America.
Actually, British rule in Palestine had been for months largely fictitious. British troops had been withdrawn from one area after another, and even where they remained, they had been able or willing to do little more than protect themselves and carry messages between the belligerent forces of Zionists and Arabs. Their presence had, however, a certain juridical significance. So long as Britain nominally retained the mandate, the Arab states could not officially send their armies onto Palestinian soil without invading territory under the British flag. At the same time, it was still possible for the debate on Palestine’s future to continue at Lake Success, and for optimists to hope that some way would there be found to halt the bloodshed.
But in and around Palestine, the five and a half months between the passage of the UN Assembly’s partition resolution and the end of British rule had been a period of military preparation on both sides, and of skirmishes building up to full scale war. And at Lake Success there had been a period of futile search, first for a way of carrying out the Assembly resolution, and then for one of replacing it. Now, with the end of the period of grace, the makers of war were ready, but the makers of peace were not.
Certainly the special session of the Assembly, called at American insistence to consider once again the problem of Palestine, had contributed little to its solution. Nations which had reluctantly yielded to the pressure of the United States in favor of partition in November were unready, five months later, to yield again to pressure from the same source for its revocation in favor of trusteeship. Perhaps they would have been more willing to do so, had there been any evidence that the United States had considered the implications of its new position any more thoroughly than it had those of the old one. But, so far as could be seen, this was not the case. Hence the readiness of the United States to jump from the certainly uncomfortable frying pan, into what appeared to be an equally uncomfortable fire, failed to inspire eager emulation on the part of the other delegations.
True, trusteeship could have worked if the Zionists had been willing to accept it, just as partition could have worked if the Arabs had acquiesced. But in neither case was this condition of feasibility met. It was easy enough to adduce arguments to show that the Arabs of Palestine and of the neighboring countries would profit more by peaceful cooperation with the Zionists than by war against them, and that the Jews of Palestine and of the world would be far better off under a settlement acceptable to the Arabs than if they insisted on one which the Arabs were determined to resist. But it was another thing to make these arguments appear persuasive to the leaders of one camp or the other, particularly in view of the fact that the leaders on both sides felt the pressure behind them of a nationalist hysteria which they had helped to create but could not control.
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Partition by Default
If the special session of the Assembly was unable to devise any substitute for partition which could command the necessary support, neither did it succeed in doing anything to implement the November 29 resolution. No council of government for the Arab state envisaged in the partition plan was set up, or even seriously thought of. No steps were taken to create a trusteeship for Jerusalem. Nothing was done about creating the economic union, without which partition could never be more than vivisection. Even the British proposal for a temporary emergency regime, without political character and designed merely to maintain the essential services which had to exist on an all-Palestinian basis if they were to exist at all, fell by the wayside.
Hence what actually came into being on May 5 was a government exerting military control over a fluctuating area—by no means identical with that assigned to the Jewish state under the partition resolution—but with all aspects of its economy except one completely disrupted. Of course this one—the financial aid which it received from the Diaspora, and particularly the United States—was crucial, but it was hardly a basis on which the new state could build its future.
Only two constructive results had come out of the special session. One was the appointment by the British, in agreement with both Jews and Arabs, of Harold Evans as municipal commissioner for Jerusalem. Evans, a Quaker from Philadelphia, was given broad authority but no instruments for enforcing it. Yet, since both sides trusted him—as they clearly did not trust either the British or the UN itself—it seemed possible that he might succeed in arranging a truce for Jerusalem where others had failed. Both Zionists and Arabs were, in principle, committed to the desirability of such a truce. But as first one side and then the other had held the upper hand militarily, it had sought to postpone the truce until after its expected victory.
The other achievement of the Assembly was the decision to have the five permanent members of the Council—acting as a committee of the Assembly—appoint a mediator to seek agreement between Jews and Arabs in regard to the Palestinian situation in general. Perhaps because the veto did not apply in a committee of the Assembly, perhaps merely because the mediator had been carefully stripped of any actual or potential power, the Big Five found no difficulty in unanimously agreeing on Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden for the job. Count Bernadotte accepted the task, while making no secret of the fact that he did not expect to succeed in it. Perhaps in the hope of clothing himself with more authority than a mere representative of the United Nations could possess, he announced that he wished to be regarded as a representative of the International Red Cross.
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The War
The new state found itself at war on many fronts. Indeed, the war antedated the state. Most of the battlefields had been, and still were, outside the territory assigned to the Jewish state by the partition resolution of the Assembly. (This fact was cited by the British representative in the Security Council, Sir Alexander Cadogan, as one of the reasons why it would be difficult to determine who was actually the aggressor.) Even before the British had left, the Irgun and Haganah had joined to seize control of Jaffa, inhabited entirely by Arabs and assigned by the UN to the Arab state. Similarly, Haganah had begun its assault on Acre—also in the territory allotted by the Assembly to the Arabs—well before the British had left, although that historic fortress-city did not capitulate until some days after the proclamation of the state of Israel. Again, the approaches to Jerusalem, for which Haganah had unsuccessfully battled since early April, were all in Arab territory. And in Jerusalem itself, where the partition resolution had provided that neither Jews nor Arabs should exercise jurisdiction or have armed forces, Haganah had seized control of the Arab Katamon quarter while the mandate was still in force, and had occupied the central portion of the city as soon as the British left.
The locale of’ the fighting was not, of course, the consequence of Arab self-restraint. In part, it resulted from the fact that the boundaries set by the partition resolution assumed full cooperation between Jews and Arabs. Without such cooperation, they were unworkable—particularly in the case of the Jewish state, two of whose three sections were islands entirely surrounded by Arabs, as was Jerusalem itself. Hence the Jewish state was faced with the alternatives of accepting the isolation of Jerusalem, sacrificing Galilee and the Negev, and confining itself to the coastal strip between Tel Aviv and Haifa, or invading the territory allotted to the Arabs. It chose the latter.
The attacks on Jaffa and Acre, however, were not necessitated by the geography of partition. They appeared, rather, to be the result of Haganah’s determination to seize all possible positions of vantage before the regular armies of the Arab states could enter into the battle and neutralize its advantages of numbers and equipment.
With the end of the mandate and the entrance into action of the regular armies of the Arab states, the balance of strength was altered in favor of the Arabs. As a result, although the principal fighting continued to be in and around Jerusalem, the territory of Israel was also brought under attack. In the case of the coastal plain—now almost solidly Jewish, since the flight of one hundred and fifty thousand Arab inhabitants of the area—this was for the moment confined to raids by the Egyptian air force. In the Negev, however, the Egyptian army advanced up through the Arab coastal area to Gaza and then cut across to Beersheba, effectively controlling most of that desert area. And in Galilee, while most of the territory allotted to the Jewish state was still in the hands of Haganah, troops of Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan had all won a foothold. And Haganah had apparently abandoned completely any hope of defending isolated colonies in Arab areas.
Militarily, the Negev appeared untenable for the forces of the new state. True, a sufficient concentration of them might succeed in recovering it from the Egyptians. But the maintenance in the desert of a garrison sufficient to hold the area was a task which appeared beyond the capacity of Haganah. In Galilee, the situation was somewhat more favorable to Israel. Here, the numerous colonies formed an interlocking chain of bases for its forces. But the mobilization of the entire male population, and the evacuation of women and children, meant that the fields went untended. Communications with the coastal area were inadequate and uncertain. And the principal electric supply of Galilee, from the Ruthenberg hydroelectric plant at Naharayim in Transjordan, was cut off by King Abdullah.
It was in the Jerusalem area, however, that the intervention of the Arab regulars appeared most likely to produce decisive results in the immediate future. Here, Haganah had held the advantage in the city itself, although unable to break the blockade which Fawzi el Kawukji’s irregulars had erected around it, or to maintain the city’s water and electric supplies. But with the Arab Legion’s entrance into the battle, the tide shifted. Almost immediately Kfar Etzion and its satellite colonies, five miles south of Jerusalem, fell to the Legion. (At first, Haganah reported that the entire population of Kfar Etzion had been massacred after surrendering, and spoke of accusing Glubb Pasha as a war criminal; later word was received through the Red Cross from the colonists that they had been taken prisoner and were being treated in accordance with the Geneva convention.) Shortly thereafter, the Legion recaptured the strategic Sheik Jarrah quarter from Haganah, as well as extending Arab control inside the Old City.
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The Nations
Meanwhile, at Lake Success, the Security Council took up where the General Assembly had left off. Its effectiveness was not notably greater than that of the lesser body. First, it submitted to all the parties in the conflict a questionnaire as to the activities of their forces in Palestine and on its borders, their justification for such activities, and the status of peace negotiations. Transjordan refused to answer on the grounds that it had not been admitted to the United Nations or recognized by the United States, which had framed the questionnaire. The Jewish Agency’s representative, Major Aubrey Eban, replied on behalf of Israel that its troops were in control of most of the territory allotted to it under the partition resolution, as well as certain other parts of Palestine, but that they had not operated outside of Palestine except for occasional forays. Palestine’s Arab neighbors told the Council that their troops were operating in Palestine at the request of the Arab population for the purpose of restoring order, repatriating Arab refugees, and suppressing Zionist terrorist bands. They added that they were taking this action as a regional organization under the terms of the UN Charter. The Arabs declared that they would undertake no negotiations with a Jewish state; the Agency declared that it had tried to negotiate with Transjordan but had been rebuffed. While waiting for the replies to its questions—none of which arrived by the deadline which it set for them—the Council whiled away the time by debating whether the war in Palestine constituted a threat to the peace, and if so, whether anybody was an aggressor against whom sanctions should be employed. A United States motion to declare the situation such a threat, and to order a cease—fire on penalty of the invocation of sanctions, was defeated. In its place, the Council adopted a British motion which declared that since the parties in Palestine had failed to heed the Council’s previous appeals for a truce, it was issuing another one. It also directed the UN’s truce commission in Jerusalem, consisting of the American, French, and Belgian consuls, to give first priority to the negotiation of a truce for that city. (Since they had presumably been doing precisely that all along, and since their latest reports indicated that the fighting had more or less isolated them from one another-a fact which was emphasized by the killing of the American Consul—General and the occasional bombardment of all three consulates—the last request seemed somewhat gratuitous.) The willingness of Israel to accept a truce was communicated to the UN by a representative of the Jewish Agency. (The question was raised by Britain whether the Agency could commit the Irgun and Stern gangs.) The Arabs, however, requested an extension of the original deadline so that the Arab League could meet and consider the problem. It was rumored that the Arab states would refuse any general truce with a Jewish state, but were willing to agree to a truce for Jerusalem provided all armed forces of both sides were removed from that city and Jewish convoys into it were subject to inspection by the Red Cross to make sure that they contained no military supplies. Meanwhile, however, Britain exerted herself to induce the Arabs to heed the UN’s cease-fire appeal, and the Foreign Ministry was reported hopeful.
One obstacle to a halt in the Palestinian war was the complete lack of coordination between British and American policy. While Britain continued to deliver military supplies already ordered by the Arabs, and to permit British officers to continue to serve with the Arab Legion, President Truman received Dr. Weizmann and permitted him to leave with the impression that Israel would receive a loan for the purchase of military supplies from the United States. Britain’s action produced hysterical demands that she be deprived of all aid under the Marshall Plan; that of the United States substantially reduced the chance that the Arabs would agree to a halt in the fighting, since if a flow of American aid to Israel was in prospect, any temporary truce could only work to the relative disadvantage of the Arabs.
In Palestine as elsewhere, the key to what occurred at Lake Success lay not in the debates of Security Council or Assembly, but in the decisions of the very sovereign member states. From this point of view, the action of the United States in according de facto recognition to Israel, and of the Soviet Union in recognizing it de jure, was of major importance to the new state. To be sure, other states were hesitant to follow the example of either US or USSR in this respect. Britain withheld recognition, and urged the Dominions to do likewise, lest recognition of Israel make it more difficult to persuade the Arabs to a truce. (South Africa, however, did recognize Israel.) France likewise failed to recognize the new state—although her Chamber of Deputies sent it a message of fraternal greetings.
Juridically, of course, the de facto recognition which Israel received from the United States was not of too much value. It entitled the new government to receive complaints if American interests were damaged within its jurisdiction, but it did not yet render the new state eligible for the loans it sought from governmental or intergovernmental agencies. (On the other hand, it seemed rather definitely to make the American members of the Jewish Agency subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.) Yet morally, there was no doubt that even de facto recognition offered the new state substantial encouragement. Moreover, it was generally regarded as a prelude to early recognition de jure.
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The Arabs
However valuable recognition from the United States and the Soviet Union might be to the new state, recognition from even one of the Arab countries would be worth far more. But of this there seemed no prospect. At various times Zionists had placed their hopes on Christian Lebanon and on Abdullah’s Transjordan. But Lebanon had been a principal source of volunteers and support for the Arab Liberation Army, while Abdullah had accepted the post of commander-in-chief of the forces of all the Arab states.
Zionists had counted, too, on the rivalries of the various Arab countries and their internal discontents as barriers to effective intervention. Both rivalries and discontents certainly existed. But so far, at least, they had served as a spur rather than a deterrent to intervention. There were signs of a race between the various Arab armies to occupy coveted parts of Palestine. But Israel hardly seemed likely to be the gainer, whether Egypt or Transjordan annexed the Negev. As for the internal discontents in the Arab states, these made intervention inevitable. Any Arab government which had hung back would have faced immediate replacement by one more ready to carry out the desires of a nationalistic populace—just as any sign of weakness on the part of Zionist leadership might transfer the initiative to the Irgun and Stern gangs. On the other hand, an Arab government engaged in defending the rights of Palestinian Arabs had a moral argument of great value against its domestic opposition. For the latter could be accused of stabbing the Arab cause in the back. This fact, incidentally, cast some doubt on the validity of those military calculations which were based on the assumption that the Arab states would have to keep half their regular forces at home as a guarantee against internal disorders. Potential opponents could easily be mobilized for service in Palestine, just as Haganah had accepted the services of Irgunists and Sternists.
Nevertheless, a decisive Arab victory did not seem likely for some time, at least. The forces of the Arab states were almost certainly not sufficient to overrun the coastal area, which contained the bulk of Palestine’s Jews. Though their equipment seemed, on the whole, to be temporarily superior to that of Haganah, this was a situation which could easily change. Israel held ports through which military supplies could come, and seemed likely to be able for some time to devote greater financial resources to their acquisition than could the Arabs—albeit at the sacrifice of other goals. It had, too, factories for the manufacture of munitions whose capacity probably exceeded that of the combined Arab states.
This situation was, of course, subject to a quick and drastic change if Pakistan should join the Arab League and commit even a significant part of its resources to the struggle. For Pakistan had more trained soldiers than the entire population of Israel, as well as quantities of modern munitions which would loom very large in a war on the scale of that in Palestine. There were some indications that this might conceivably occur. Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s delegate to the UN, was reported to have attended the session of the Arab League at which plans for the invasion of Palestine were prepared, and to have pressed for action. And Pakistan’s own internal discontents might well furnish Mohammed Ali Jinnah the necessary incentive to a military adventure abroad—especially one which gave promise of quick and not too difficult glory.
On the other hand, it was possible that Pakistan hoped to use the threat of intervention as a weapon for the achievement of a compromise settlement. In the debate at Lake Success, Zafrullah Khan at one point was reported to have suggested that he might change his mind about partition if the Jews would be content with those areas in which they were presently the majority. While the Arabs would almost certainly reject such a proposal from any other source, it was not impossible that they would accede to it if it were advanced by the world’s largest Moslem state. Nor was it altogether out of the question that such Zionist leaders as Chaim Weizmann and even David Ben Gurion would prefer the peaceful possession of a smaller state to war for a larger one-especially if it were clear that the war would be a losing one.
Even if Pakistan held aloof, however, the Jewish state seemed to stand no chance of a decisive military victory. It might win many battles, but unless it could arrive at an agreement with at least part of the Arab world, such victories would simply serve to further exacerbate Arab nationalism and result in the assembling of new armies on the soil of the Arab states. Even intervention by UN or the great powers could not alter this fact. For, though a UN force might serve to prevent any particular invasion, it could not be expected—and the new state certainly would not wish it—to remain forever. But whenever it left, the Arabs would still be there.
It was probably a realization of this on the part of most Zionist leaders which led to the ambivalence with which they regarded Abdullah of Transjordan and his Arab Legion. For, much as they feared the Legion as an opponent, they had never given up hoping that Abdullah might be amenable to a deal whereby he recognized the Jewish state in return for its assistance in annexing the Arab parts of Palestine. Indeed, sources close to the Zionist leadership had even hinted at a readiness to negotiate with Abdullah on a basis of incorporation of the Jewish state in an Arab federation under his rule—provided that it retain complete autonomy in all matters, including immigration. And at the same time as they excoriated the British for continuing their subsidy to the Arab Legion, some Zionists counted on that subsidy as an instrument for influencing Abdullah in their direction.
Whatever the prospects of such a deal at some future date, they did not seem bright at the moment. One reason for this was that there was no place in such a plan for the Egyptian occupation of the Negev, and no likelihood of an Egyptian withdrawal from that area except in the face of superior force. It was also questionable whether even Abdullah’s absolute monarchy would stand the strain of a deal with the Zionists on any basis not approved by the other Arab states. Certainly the rather unstable throne of his relatives in Iraq would be in serious danger in such an event.
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The Children of Israel
Not all the obstacles to an agreement were on the Arab side of the fence, however. For the moment, to be sure, the more extreme elements in Israel appeared to be held more or less in check. This was indicated by the election of Chaim Weizmann, always a spokesman for moderation, as President, with the support of all parties except the Revisionists. (The Zionist Organization of America, which had a few weeks earlier sent out a press release gloating over the lack of attention received by Weizmann’s “defeatist” views, was of course not represented in the Jewish National Council which named him President.) But the Irgun and Sternists, if now part of the national forces of Israel, remained none the less Irgunists and Sternists. This was made clear by the Irgun’s leader, Menahem Beigin, in a radio address in which he declared that his forces would cease from terrorist activity within the confines of the state of Israel, but would continue to fight until they had conquered all of Palestine and Transjordan. And ten days before their leader was made a major in the forces of Israel, the Sternists had assassinated seven British soldiers in what the Haganah described as a “cowardly, murderous attack.” Since such words and deeds were not only permitted in the Jewish state, but those responsible for them were recognized as part of its army, even the best disposed Arab had reason to wonder whether Israel would actually be able to carry out any undertaking to keep the peace.
A continued state of war would almost certainly result in a strengthening of the extremists and a weakening of democratic tendencies in Israel. Other disastrous consequences could also be expected to flow from it. Total mobilization of Haganah meant that the economy of Jewish Palestine would come to an almost complete halt, the more so since the Arabs who furnished an important part of its labor had already fled. Nor could this lack be made up by the entrance of new immigrants, since preparation for the reception of immigrants also required large quantities of labor. (Indeed, housing had fallen far behind in the face of even the limited immigration permitted in recent years. Thus Louis Kraft, secretary of the Jewish Welfare Board’s national council, reported that a large part of Jerusalem’s Jews lacked “even the simplest amenities of decent living” and that this fact had led to a high delinquency rate. Nor had the housing situation been improved by the destruction consequent on civil war.) And it went without saying that as long as the war lasted Palestine would have room only for the young and healthy.
At the same time, war meant that Israel would be cut off from a large part of the resources essential to its economic development. It was all very well to talk about TVA’s on the Jordan, but only one side of one part of the Jordan was in the Jewish state—and in one of its most exposed sections, at that. There could be no development of the Jordan, either for power or for irrigation, without the cooperation of not only Arab Palestine but the Arab states as well. And without such development, there could be little hope of significantly expanding Israel’s absorptive capacity, or even making it economically viable. Again, one of the first results of the war had been the forced abandonment of the Palestine Potash Company’s plants on the Dead Sea, since these were in Arab territory. And the chemicals of the Dead Sea were, next to the water of the Jordan, Palestine’s most important natural resource. Similarly, the war had put out of action one of Palestine’s chief industrial assets, the oil refineries of Haifa. These had been closed down after the massacre of Jewish employes which followed Irgun’s murder of a number of Arab workers. Now, of course, the Arab workers had fled Haifa, so that it would have been difficult to reopen the refineries even if the oil were available. But the pipelines to Haifa originated in and passed for almost their entire length through Arab territory, so that it was obvious that no oil would flow through them as long as the war continued.
The effects of the war on Jewish culture in Palestine were less immediately obvious but no less tragic from the point of view of those Zionists who had dreamed of that country as the center of a Jewish cultural renascence. (Palestine was not the only place where Jewish culture seemed likely to suffer. In the United States, the Jewish Education Association reported that it had been unable to raise its $175,000 budget because of the financial demands of the Jewish state.) No people existing in a permanent state of mobilization had ever developed a significant culture. And a Jewish Sparta hardly seemed a consummation to be wished.
Nevertheless, there were few Zionists either in the Yishuv or the Diaspora who were today ready to settle for less than a state, even if that state were condemned to the permanent role of a nation in arms. Some of them—particularly at a distance—even seemed rather to relish the picture of Israel as a David surrounded by Goliaths whom it would perpetually beat off. Most—particularly in Palestine—seemed ready to accept it with resignation.
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Talk of Peace
It was not ‘only in respect to Palestine that the UN’s role appeared to be that of the chorus in Greek tragedy, able only to bewail the approach of a foreordained doom but never to act to avert it. In the midst of the Palestine discussion the decision of the UN’s Atomic Energy Commission to abandon its attempt to reach agreement passed almost unnoticed. Yet it represented surrender on a front where surrender was disastrous. The primary blame for the failure to arrive at an agreement for the international control of the atom was, of course, Soviet Russia’s. The United States had advanced the Baruch Plan, under which we would surrender our monopoly of atomic weapons and our right to make them in return for the establishment of an adequate system of international control and inspection. The Soviet Union had steadfastly refused to submit to any such system. Yet it was also true that American enthusiasm for the Baruch Plan had noticeably waned since its introduction, and that there were many in the service departments who were only too glad to use Russian intransigeance as an excuse to let the whole thing drop and retain the bomb for future reference.
A similar situation emerged in connection with the exchange of notes between the United States and Russia relative to their outstanding differences. A statement by the US ambassador in Moscow, to the effect that American foreign policy would remain the same whatever the election results but that we were always ready to discuss points of difference with the Soviet Union, was seized on by the latter as a bid to a conference and promptly “accepted.” In the ensuing discussion, a number of facts became quite clear. One of them was that the State Department had not meant to propose any conference, and that the Russians knew it. Another was that the Russians had showed no recent signs of retreating from the adamant positions they had taken in a number of current negotiations, such as those over the Austrian treaty, so that there was little reason to believe that any conference would be fruitful of anything except recrimination. Unfortunately, however, it also became fairly clear that the State Department was by no means ready to offer a program for the peaceful settlement of outstanding issues, and was therefore very much afraid of a conference, lest the Soviet Union put it on the spot. And there was at least a suspicion that some elements in Washington would have been exceedingly annoyed at any Soviet-American agreement, even if it were possible, at a time when the military budget and peacetime conscription were before Congress.
Yet the people of the world desperately wanted peace. Hence a peace offensive, however motivated, remained an effective political instrument. The advantage in the diplomatic exchange therefore appeared to rest, for the moment, with the Soviet Union. Moreover, the possibility existed that Russia was actually ready to make some concessions in return for a settlement at this point. Obviously, she had no chance to win a war for many years to come. And the increasingly firm policy of the Western powers seemed likely to have convinced her at last that she had reached the limits of peaceful expansion.
True, the Russian approaches had scarcely seemed calculated to produce a favorable response. Yet this might merely indicate that the Russian foreign office had so little experience with diplomatic amenities that it was unable to be polite even when it wished to.
Perhaps a key to the extent and sincerity of Russia’s current desire for peace would emerge from the situation in Finland. There, the Communist Minister of the Interior had been dismissed from his post, which involved control of the police, after a parliamentary vote of censure. If the Soviet Union stood aside while he was replaced by a non-Communist, it would indicate a definitely conciliatory mood. But if Russian pressure precipitated a crisis in Finland, then the hope for peace in our time would be dim.
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