It would be interesting to know what, as time passes,
the Government thinks its Russian embargo policy is achieving. When the embargo was first discussed its justification was the claim that " the lives of Englishmen in Russia were in peril," which everyone I have met who knows Russia from the inside scouted as nonsense. No death sentence was in fact passed even on any of the Russian defendants, and it is certain that if it had been passed on any Englishman it would not have been carried out. But meanwhile Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Thornton remain in prison in Moscow, where it is generally agreed they would not be if the Government had refrained from its precipitate imposition of the embargo, and a counter-embargo is imposed by Russia against us. Which leaves the whole embargo policy pretty heavily condemned. The most the Government can claim, as I see it, is that but for the threat of the embargo the sentences would have been heavier. No one can prove or disprove that, and anyone who likes can believe or (as I do) disbelieve it. The embargo, it is worth remembering, has a life of three months, of which just four weeks have so far run.
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