As our readers are aware, we have always regretted the
breach with Soviet Russia, not because of any extravagant hopes for trade or visions of " bulging cornbins," but because of the paramount consideration of international peace. The League is fatally crippled so long as Russia and the United States stand outside the organized world community. That Soviet Russia still considers herself in a " state of war " all who knoir the country' can testify. There can be no other explana- tion for that Government's action in depriving Mr. Haensel, Professor of Public Finance in Moscow, of all his posts and titles " for alleged speeches in an anti- Soviet spirit, particularly at Oxford "—during his' visit last month to England. Mr. Haensel's " treason," it appears, consisted inter alia in a statement that since the Bolsheviks had abolished the distinction between skilled and unskilled workers, all the Russian workers were now unskilled—a harmless enough donnish quip, one would think, but terrible in the eyes of the completely humourless watchdogs in Moscow. This is an indication of the kind of people we have to deal with. A report circulates, too that Tomsky, the leading light of Russian Trade Unionism, is in disgrace, and, in fact, in exile. He was regarded by many as a possible successor to Stalin.
* * * *
Previous page
