Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...French-British recognition of General Franco's Spain left only a handful of nations still recognizing the Loyalists, chief among which were Soviet Russia, China, Mexico, Cuba, the U. S. With the probable exception of the Soviet Union, they too were expected to change over promptly...
Eggs, Baskets, Bets. Last week the "guardian" was playing the Pilsudski game for all it was worth. Having recently visited Führer Hitler at Berchtesgaden, entertained German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop at Warsaw and signed a commercial treaty and reaffirmed a non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia, Colonel Beck played host to Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano. It was reported that Colonel Beck lent an interested ear to Count Ciano's talk about Italy's colonial "aspirations" (at the expense of France) in the Mediterranean. Some diplomatic correspondents even reported that Italy was ready...
What Colonel Beck would regard as an ideal state of affairs is an Eastern Europe in which the Soviet Union and Germany were continually mad at but not fighting each other. A cynical and unscrupulous latter-day Talleyrand, Colonel Beck believes in playing all horses at one time, but putting no great amount of money on any one. The "ironclad" alliance with France is still theoretically good, but so are the German and Russian non-aggression treaties. In a Franco-German war one of them would have to be broken, but that does not trouble the conscience of Colonel Beck...
After Poland's declaration of independence in 1918, young Beck became a captain, then a major, in the new Polish Army. He was one of the first selected by Marshal Pilsudski for the new Polish Military Staff College. In the war with Soviet Russia in 1920, when Soviet forces under the late Marshal Mikhail Tukhachavsky pursued the Polish Army to the gates of Warsaw, the young officer was first a colonel of horse artillery, then commander on the Lithuanian-White Russian frontier. Later he became military attache in Paris. That period in Colonel Beck's career was ended...
Sent by President Wilson and Wartime British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to observe the new Soviet Russia, young Bullitt returned to have his report (recommending recognition of the Soviets) ignored and himself denounced by Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons. For the next 14 years Bill Bullitt occupied his time writing a violent expatriate novel, getting psychoanalyzed in Vienna, divorced twice. If his old friend Franklin Roosevelt had not won the Presidency, Bill Bullitt might still be sitting around Paris at loose ends...