25 OCTOBER 1924, Page 2

Mr. MacDonald's reply to Mr. Asquith's plain question about the

Russian Treaty was a very poor one. Mr. Asquith asked why it was that Mr. MacDonald having vowed again and again that his Government would never guarantee a loan to the Soviet, and having spoken of suggestions that he was contemplating such a thing as though they were insults, finally approved of a Treaty in which a loan to the Soviet was guaranteed. Perhaps the best thing would have been for Mr. MacDonald to have said that he had changed his mind. That is a confession which the whole world always honours and which nobody has any right to ridicule. But Mr. MacDonald preferred to try to explain that the guarantee which he consented to in August was quite a different sort of guarantee from that which he repudiated in June.