Moscow, Feb. 14, An appeal for the strengthening of the Red Army and Air Force, and for keeping the entire Soviet population in a state of mobilization for jan armed attack, was made by M. [Josef Stalin, the Soviet Dictator, in an important statement in the official newspaper, "Pravda," to-day on the position of the Soviet Union, both internally and in relation to other countries, Internally, M, Stalin asserted, the bourgeoisie had been crushed and a Socialist state established Externally, he continued, the Soviet Union "was still in danger of an armed attack by capitalist countries and of attempts by them to restore capitalism, M. Stalin urged that the international proletariat must be linked up with the Soviet people, and that connections with the working classes in bourgeois countries must be strengthened and organized to give political assistance in the event of an armed attack on the Soviet Union It was ridiculous and stupid, M. Stalin contended, to close their eyes io the fact that they were encircled by capitalist countries, and to think that their external enemies, for example the Fascists, would not try when a chance presented itself, to carry out an armed attack on the Soviet.
It would be no less ridiculous, he said, to deny that, in the event of the slightest success for armed intervention, interventionists would try to destroy the Soviet system in reas occupied by them and res ihe bourgeois system, Only blockheads or covert enemies, who wished to camouflage their hi tilities by bragging and who trio demobilize the people, could deny the danger of armed, intervention Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.