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Show ; Behind THENl:WS-j By PaUlMaLLON ' Released by Western Newspaper Union. RUSSIAN 'SENSITIVITY IS JUST DIPLOMATIC TRICK j WASHINGTON. What the Rus-j Rus-j sians are up to, no one around the j state department appears to 'know for sure. Yet certainly Stalin's : propaganda is designed to make all j walk a straight and narrow path as ! Russia directs and to soften our , officials into a frightened tender- ness. Having attacked the religious and peace-minded American delegate, John Foster Dulles, as a war monger, the Russian government officially sent a note declaring State Undersecretary Undersec-retary Acheson to be "rudely slanderous' and "hostile toward the Soviet union" for having said simply this: "Russia's foreign for-eign policy is an aggressive and expanding one." Acheson did not volunteer this comment. He offered what the Soviets call "inadmissible behav-iior" behav-iior" under questioning by a con-i con-i grsssienal committee on the Lilien-' Lilien-' thai appointment. It may be inadmissible inad-missible for anyone to speak out ,in Russia, but in a democracy it is :paramountly necessary for a government gov-ernment official to answer frankly the questions of congress. GO AFTER WHAT THEY WANT The word "aggressive" means "disposed to vigorous outgoing activity ac-tivity in behalf of an object." Any undeluded person in the realm of reason must consider the term "aggressive" as applied to Soviet diplomacy to be accurately and mildly descriptive. The Soviets certainly cer-tainly have been belligerently aggressive ag-gressive in Iran, have swallowed up Latvia, Esthonia and Lithuania, and their Communists pride themselves them-selves on being politically aggressive aggres-sive throughout Europe and Asia, as do their delegates in U. N. Acheson also said Soviet policy pol-icy was "expanding,. which means "enlarging, swelling, spreading out.' Anyone who claims it is not would do violence vio-lence to the plain facts, which are no secret to any adult American. Russian foreign policy pol-icy is thoroughly in accord with world communism, which is bent on world conquest. Off the record around here, some officials used to say when they saw the Soviets doing violence to language lan-guage and reason: "The Russians are crazy, but not that crazy." Now these same men say they are not so sure. The behavior of Russia diplomatically diplo-matically of late has been mimical to the simplest of common sense It is becoming inadmissible to reason. Indeed, some diplomats wish to send Russia's world activities activi-ties to a psychiatrist for the answer. MOTIVES NO MYSTERY However, this is not the general studied viewpoint of the close followers fol-lowers of Soviet technique. Russia does not bother much about reason, only about reasons. Her motives are less a mystery to the new military mili-tary regime than to the old Byrnes political crowd. I think the average impression impres-sion here is that Stalin (through Molotov) has really outdone himself this time in stretching his professed willingness to be offended at the slightest murmur. mur-mur. He has reduced his pressures pres-sures to absurdity. The old Roosevelt crowd used to consider con-sider Stalin's sensitivity as an inferiority complex. This theory held some weight until evidences evi-dences of the Russian superiority superi-ority complex accumulated In denial of it after the war. Personally Per-sonally I think Stalin learned diplomacy from Hitler. You will recall Hitler was alternately frightening the world and being offended by it, and his technique tech-nique brought him many things he wanted. That game somehow has worn out. People are familiar with it, particularly military people. They , are less inclined to fall into what-ever what-ever pattern of action the dictators try to chase them. Words and politics poli-tics annoy them. They want to know the facts and they want to act on the facts. In view of this maintenance of realism, what the state department and General Marshall Mar-shall in his official note responding to the Russian protest have said publicly about the incident, is really only a part of what they actually think. LABOR LAWS AWAITED Much talk of an anticipated depression de-pression can be heard from business busi-ness leaders, financial people and economic observers, but you will not see any sign of it. The larger i enterprises (and people generally i also,) seem to be waiting to see ; what the Republicans will do about ! labor. The majority apparently ' does not want to break the unions or their right to collective bargaining, bargain-ing, but they want to stop union . domination of the economic situa-. situa-. tion, and power to tie up the country. |