30 APRIL 1932, Page 3

Relations with Russia In a letter in Wednesday's Times Lord

Revelstoke makes a Wise and timely appeal for the abandonment of personal and political prejudice in the approach to the problem of 'relations with Russia. The interchange of goods, he most justly points out, is the natural and proper cure for international animosities, to which it may be added that the one way to drive Bolshevism into inbreeding and intensification is to ostracize it, while the one way to keep the people of Russia in touch with reason is to maintain intercourse with them and let in the ma_xirinini of light and air. Russia is far too formidable an economic factor in the world to be disposed of in the spirit of some of the facile and provocative questions put to Ministers in the House of Commons. She will figure on a steadily increasing scale in world markets in the years immediately ahead, and to deal with her on the basis of obscurantist antagonism will be fatal. The Russian Government has been unwise and unreasonable in many respects in its approach to the debt settlement problem, and the disparity in the direct balance of trade between Russia and ourselves urgently needs correcting. But the way of promise. as Lord Revelstoke opportunely insists, is in developing those contacts for which Russia, at Geneva and elsewhere, is showing herself increasingly disposed.

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