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CHAPTER IX
THE KREMLIN'S PROGRAM
Imperialist Expansion and World Revolution
To comprehend Russia's bid for control over the German
Reich, it is necessary first to have an understanding of the
Soviet Union's more general aims and ideas. Lack of such
knowledge is primarily responsible for the botch our leaders
have made of our relations with Moscow.
Surging, aggressive Soviet Russia represents a merger of
the territorial ambitions of old Russian imperialism and the
communist program of world revolution. The former proceeds
as before on military power and the allurements of Pan-Slav-
ism, to which has now been added the force of world com-
munism. The latter, motivated as always by the crusading
urge of ideological fanaticism, finds itself carried along by the
expansionist imperialism of its base, Soviet Russia. Reinforc-
ing each other as they do, the two confront the world with
menacing power.
Russian imperial expansion now as in former years threat-
ens British trade routes, strategic oil reserves, and commercial
opportunities. Russian attempts to penetrate through Iran to
the Persian Gulf and through the Dardanelles and Trieste to
the Mediterranean are to Britain intolerable threats to her life-
line to India. Equally damaging is the actual and potential
enlargement of the Soviet Union itself, for wherever it ex-
pands it virtually closes the door to international trade and
financial operations on which Britain thrives and without
which she starves. Through the force of world communism the
U.S.S.R., which has already drawn into its orbit the eastern
half of Europe and important sections of Asia, actively men-
aces other sectors all over the globe-in Asia, Africa, western
Europe, and even the Americas.
And because we believe our own vital interests parallel
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