The Foreign Office publication was one of the loudest bombs
ever dropped in the midst of a General Election. In the comparative silence of amazement which followed everybody looked for enlightenment to the Prime Minister. He, however, remained silent till Monday. In the meantime the cue of nearly all the Labour speakers was to pretend that there was no doubt whatever that the Zinovicff letter was a forgery—an assertion which turned the presumed consent of the Prime Minister to the publication . of the protest into a first-class mystery. Mr. Snowden was one of the few Labour speakers who admitted that if the letter was genuine the Treaty was done with. Moscow also at once denied the genuineness of the letter. We may remark here that denials from Moscow can never be given their face value. At the time when subsidies and Russian Crown jewels were being thrown at the head of the Daily Herald, Kameneff, on behalf of the Soviet Government, stoutly denied that there had been any such transactions.
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