The Foreign Office published in Monday's papers two vigorous notes
which Lord Curzon had addressed to the Bolsheviks and their evasive reply. It is to Sc observed that the Bolshevik organ in London had published Lord Curzon's first note and the reply to it without his permission, but we are bound to say that the Government in their dealings with Moscow should cultivate the widest publicity. We cannot imagine, however, how Mr. Lansbury can put himself under obligations to the people who, according to his own account, made bins the victim of an outrageous plot. Lord Curzon made it plain. that =lees the Bolsheviks fulfilled their promise to release the unhappy British prisoners at Moscow and Balm, and to abstain from anti-British propaganda here and in Asia, the Govern- ment could nob continue the trade negotiations. He remindrd the Bolsheviks that M. Kameneff during his stay in Louden had attempted to subsidize a revolutionary conispiracy, th.'t three hundred British subjects were still detained in Russia, and that "a veritable tornado of propaganda, intrigue 011:1 conspiracy" had been launched against British interests in Asia. M. Krassin gave a conditional promise that the prisoners
should be freed, but evaded the question of propaganda, alleging that Great Britain had helped the Poles and General Wrangel. Lord Curzon in his second note said that when the Bolsheviks had released the prisoners and shown a real desire to abandon their anti-British agitation he would be prepared to dismiss trade relations with Russia.
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