In a Note published on Wednesday, Lord Curzon asked Chicherin,
the Bolshevik Foreign Minister, for a definite assur- ance that the Bolsheviks would cease from their hostile activities, especially on the Indian frontier. Lord Curzon reminded him that by the Trade Agreement of March the Bolsheviks undertook to abstain from anti-British propaganda. Yet the Bolshevik Government had invited Indian revolutionaries to Moscow to concert a rising in India. They had sent Hafiz, an Indian anarch- ist, to set up a storehouse of bombs on the Afghan frontier. By their new treaty with Afghanistan they agreed to pay the Ameer a subsidy of a million gold roubles, in return for the right to establish consulates at Kandahar, Ghazni, and other places near the Indian frontier, which have no Russian trade, but which will serve as centres for propaganda. Lord Curzon referred also to the anti-British intrigues of Rothstein, the Bolshevik envoy at Teheran, and to the persistent efforts of the Bolsheviks to prevent Mustapha Kemal from coming to terms with the Allies. Moscow had sanctioned the expenditure of £666,000 for the supply of arms to the frontier tribes who give us so much trouble. An unfortunate coincidence, this number ! Tho cryptographers of the Bible will revel in the recollection that 666 is the number of the Beast in Revelation.
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