p The Soviet Union proceeded from the belief that to keep the peace, the aggressor bloc had to be confronted by a united front of the nations interested in preventing war. The view in the USSR was that the sooner the ruling circles of Britain, France and the United States realised the need for a collective effort to safeguard peace, the easier it would be to put paid to the aggressive action by the fascist states in preparation for another world war.

p The forces of peace were stronger, not weaker, than those of aggression and war. Therefore, the action by aggressors, who, besides, resorted to bluff and blackmail, could have been checked. The Soviet government was consistently pressing for urgent and united action by the peoples and nations keen on preserving peace to straitjacket the aggressors.

p The League of Nations could still do much towards forestalling aggression. The aggressors, on their part, were trying hard to scuttle the League by all means to the extent of getting its Covenant revised. More particularly, they insisted on the deletion of Article 16 providing for sanctions against the aggressor. "The major driving motive 143 behind the intriguing of Beck and other agents of Germany, Italy and Japan against the League of Nations,” the Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs emphasised on January 4, 1938, "is the desire to do away with the FrancoSoviet and Soviet-Czechoslovak pacts based on Article 16 of the League’s Covenant."

p The People’s Commissar pointed out, explaining the Soviet position with regard to the League of Nations, that it would be a matter of immense political importance under the prevailing circumstances to publish a joint AngloFranco-Soviet Declaration in defence of the League of Nations, which the USSR had been urging for over a year. Yet Britain fought shy of such a declaration.^^5^^

The Soviet Union was calling most serious attention to the storm clouds gathering over Austria. The Soviet government realised that a Nazi seizure of that country would be nothing but a link in the whole chain of events which would ultimately lead to another world war. The Soviet government urged collective action to safeguard peace in Central Europe.