Good-by, Mr. Cripps

A British hope fell sick last week. The hope had flesh & blood in the person of Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's new liberal, intellectual, ascetic, idealistic Ambassador to Moscow. Sir Stafford's job, which he confidently applied for himself, was to pry Russia away from Germany. At first it looked as if the smart Laborite aristocrat might succeed. Germany's romp through France had alarmed Russians about Germany's growing power. On July 7, Sir Stafford had a three-hour conversation with Joseph Stalin. But last week Premier and Foreign Commissar Viacheslav M. Molotov made a speech the burden of which was: Sir Stafford has failed.

Speaking to the Supreme Soviet in the strangely regal, marble-columned St. Andrew's Hall of the Kremlin, Comrade Molotov took proud note of Russian successes since inception of the German-Russian relationship: 96,360 square miles and 23,000,000 people taken from Poland, Finland, Rumania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. He used this data to brush off Britain's friend, the U. S. Of relations with the U. S., he declared bluntly: "There is nothing good to say. Soviet success has not pleased the United States, but this does not interest us." He bracketed the U. S. and Japan as lands with growing "imperialist appetites."

What Premier Molotov was driving at was clearer when he brought up Britain's enemies. The pact with Germany was still strong, he said, and "all British efforts to weaken it have failed," for the friendship is based "not on fortuitous considerations of a transient nature, but on fundamental State interests. . . ." Relations with Italy, he added, were improving steadily.

M. Molotov acknowledged Britain's gesture of sending Sir Stafford Cripps to try to straighten out relations. Then he noted that relations were still unstraightened: "It is difficult to imagine good relations with England, considering all her hostile acts against the Soviet Union."

Britain's and Sir Stafford's hope for a German-Russian blowup was still not altogether dead. There was trouble in sight in the Balkans. Russian troop maneuvers were reported in Red Poland last week. Britons could cheer themselves with the thought that dictatorships do not advertise coming changes in policy. They could even derive wishful solace from two or three mysterious passages in the Molotov speech. In one significant sentence on Germany, Premier Molotov had said: "She has not yet achieved her principal objective -- termination of the war on terms which she considers desirable." This was thought to confirm the suspicion that Russia wants prolongation of the conflict to the point where the opponents are exhausted. Again: "Our people must be in a state of mobilized preparedness so that no tricks by our foreign enemies will catch us unawares." Wishful Britons thought perhaps Germany might still be the real foreign enemy.

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