Sir Austen had great difficulty in persuading any of his
audience that Great Britain is really not attempting to push the Soviet inside a ringed fence. Was there not evidence that the British Government had launched the campaign by sending the recent Note to the Soviet ? Was there not evidence that they were scheming in Poland ? Was there not also the fact that Signor Mussolini, not long after a conversation with Sir Austen himself, had taken the anti-Russian step of recognizing the Bessarabian frontier ? Sir Austen explained that Signor Mussolini had mentioned the Bessarahian frontier but had evidently made up his mind long ago to take this step. He declared that there was no sort of collaboration between the Italian and British Governments. Everybody here knows that what Sir Austen said was the simple truth. But will he be believed ? The faet is that all the stories of an anti-Russian push come from the Soviet itself, which is greatly interested in working up the fiction that it is the victim of capitalistic persecution.
