tell us that his policy was really one not only of isolation but also of Little Englandism in which the Empire was to be given up because it could not be defended and in which military defence was to be abandoned because war would totally end civilization, we for our part would wholeheartedly support him". Martin later abandoned this position. Martin and the Statesman were criticised for pursuing an erratic response to the regime of Stalin in the Soviet Union. Martin's friend John Maynard Keynes complained that in regard to Stalin's Russia, Martin was "a little too full perhaps of goodwill. When a doubt arises it is swallowed down if possible." Martin wrote a hostile account of Leon Trotsky, "Trotsky in Mexico" for the NS, and did not allow the magazine to review Trotsky's anti-Stalinist book The Revolution Betrayed. He became disillusioned with the Soviet Union after the Hitler–Stalin Pact, which he denounced; in response the Communist Party Daily Worker ran an editorial attacking Martin. He supported the policy of demanding an unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany After attending the Soviet-sponsored World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław, Poland, in 1948, Martin wrote a hostile account of it, entitled "Hyenas and other Reptiles". Dispute with Orwell Martin's editorship resulted in what D. J. Taylor called a "titanic feud" with contributor George Orwell. Returning to the UK after fighting in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell contacted Martin and offered to give him an account of the conflict; but Martin rejected Orwell's first article, "Eyewitness in Spain", on the grounds it could undermine the Spanish Republicans. As compensation, Martin then offered Orwell a chance to review Franz Borkenau's book The Spanish Cockpit. Martin and the literary editor Raymond Mortimer turned down the review, however, on the grounds that "it is very uncompromisingly said and implies that our Spanish correspondents are all wrong"; and that it was more a restatement of Orwell's opinions than a review. Mortimer later wrote to Orwell to apologise for the rejection of his articles on Spain, stating that "There is no premium here on Stalinist orthodoxy". Orwell continued to write for the New Statesman, but made "wounding remarks" in his journalism about the magazine being "under direct communist influence" and its readers being "worshippers of Stalin". Orwell's list of fellow travellers, passed in 1949 to the Information Research Department, a branch of UK intelligence, included Martin's name.