A Lesson in Diplomacy

Joseph Stalin last week gave the world a two-part lesson in Russian diplomacy.

In the main, it was a tough lesson in tough diplomacy, the kind that Russians practice and understand.

Red Army troops drawn up in the review and the Russian people listening in on radios to Stalin's May 1 Order of the Day last week heard him use, for the first time, the unqualified Casablanca phrase: "Unconditional surrender." They heard him refer, with a warmth and force he had never before displayed, to the "gallant Anglo-American air forces" over Europe, to "the victorious troops" in North Africa, and to "one single, common blow" by the Russians in the east, the U.S. and Britain in the west. And they heard him say: "A new blow is approaching when the Red Army, together with the armies of our Allies, will break the backbone of the Fascist beast."

Here was no lament that Russia was bearing the burden alone, that the Allies were slow to launch a promised second front. But here, too, was a subtler form of the old reminder and the old urgency: "Hitlerite Germany and her armies are shaken and are undergoing a crisis, but they are not yet defeated. It would be naive to suppose that the catastrophe would come of its own accord and as part of the present course of events. Two or three more such powerful blows are necessary from the west and the east. . . ."

If Stalin now knew for certain that a second front in Europe was coming in 1943, he was giving his allies their genuine due and his people the word to stand fast for the nearing day. If he did not know it for certain, he was putting the U.S. and Britain on the spot, and he was making his record with the Russian people for whatever course he may have to take alone.

That course, on the solemn word of Stalin -- repeated last week in the most positive terms he has ever used -- cannot be a peace without victory. Said he, in a passage which was also an iron preachment to his Allies : "What sort of peace can be in question with the imperialist Fascists who have flooded Europe with blood and covered her with gallows? Is it not clear that only the complete rout of the Hitlerite armies and the unconditional surrender of Hitlerite Germany can bring Europe to peace? Is it not because they feel the approach of the coming catastrophe that the Fascists talk of peace?"

The Russians know exactly what they want in the way of territorial arrangements on their borders in eastern Europe.

Last week Joseph Stalin moved bluntly, brutally and frankly to get for Russia what Russia wants, and to force the U.S. and Britain to consent by silence if by nothing else (see col. 2).

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