19 DECEMBER 1925, Page 2

Meanwhile the . comments of the Soviet newspaper, the Pravda, are

by.no means encouraging. It says that Sir Austen Chamberlain is convinced that he has " en- ' circled " Russia at- Locarno. It .adds, " but we are encircling him and Great-Britain itself with the labouring -masses who will fight against all attempts to carry out the Locarno plans." M. Tchitcherin is making the 'greatest possible mistake if he imagines that Great Britain and France want to isolate, or sterilize, or encircle Russia. Nobody dreams of such a. thing. We are genuinely intent upon peace. In this country, and we believe also in France, the old hostility to having any dealings with Russia has died away. We want to trade with her, We believe that contact with the outer world is the :quickest cure for -all that we - dislike in the Soviet regime. Some of the Soviet . representatives, like M. Krassiu, talk when they are abroad just , like comfortable bourgeois politicians—which, we dare say, is what at heart they are. They seem • to have parted with their Communist illusions. * *