10 SEPTEMBER 1927, Page 2

It is becoming a question whether France, too, will be

compelled sooner or later to break off diplomatic relations with the Soviet. The French Government noticed recently that Rakovsky, the Soviet Ambassador in Paris, had signed a Soviet manifesto which calls upon soldiers in all the " capitalist " countries to cease supporting their own " slave-driving " Governments and to join the Red Army. The manifesto tells them that if they do not they will be "traitors to the world proletariat." The French Government naturally complained to Moscow that an Ambassador should not incite French soldiers to become deserters and revolutionaries. Tchitcherin, the Soviet Foreign Commissar, replied—this- is almost. unbelievable but true—that the Soviet was not responsible as Rakovsky belonged to the Communist Opposition. Still, Rakovsky went to Paris in the name of the Soviet. - Rakovsky hopes, no doubt, to be able to stay in Paris doing good bourgeois acts with his right hand and revolutionary acts with his left hand in the expectation that next time he is found out the same excuse will come from Moscow and will again be accepted. But will it ?