THIS QUARTER
7
sion of the Reich, and that if their own imperialisms were to sur–
vive, the Nazi bid for world power must be crushed. They prepared
for war. Hitler at once became receptive to the overtures of the
Kremlin, and at last, step by step, each perfectly timed to produce
the maximum effect on the "democratic" front, the solidarity of
Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany was published to the world. And
step by step, the American Communist Party has been dragged
along the road, its end not yet in sight, protesting at each sharp turn
to the right that the
next
tum would be leftward.
At the
end
of August, the Russo-German trade agreement is
announced.
The
Daily Worker
first rejects the news as a bourgeois
canard, then declares this is a purely economic matter with no polit–
ical implications.
A few days later the mutual assistance pact is
published.
The
Daily Worker
is sure there is an escape clause in
the full document.
It turns out there is none.
Well, anyway, the
pact means a peaceful solution of the Polish issue and is thus a
mighty blow for peace.
Germany masses her troops on the Polish
border.
The Soviet Congress will never ratify the pact! The Red
Army will defend Poland!
At 10:40 on the night of August 31,
the Soviet Congress votes unanimous ratification; at 5:45 the next
morning, the Reichswehr crosses the Polish border.
One thing, at
least, is clear: Stalin has no imperialist ambitions. He will never
invade Poland!
The Red Army annexes the Eastern half of Poland.
By
now the American friends of the Kremlin are digging in at
their last-ditch position: it is all a Machiavellian scheme of Stalin
to lure Hitler into a war that will destroy him.
But already
Pravda
has
urged the Allies to accept the peace terms which were drawn up
by
Ribbentrop
and
Molotov, that is, to appease Hitler on a scale
compared to which Munich was a heroic battle.
II.
When the shattering news of the Pact was announced, one of
the American comrades is said to have remarked triumphantly to
a bourgeois friend, "I guess
this
will proye to you that we don't
have any pipeline to Moscow!" But even this modest gain cannot
be
extracted by the Party from the wreckage caused by the Pact.
It is probably true that the American Party hierarchy were not
informed in any detail as to just what was going to happen-and
