3 JUNE 1922, Page 2

The commercial treaty,concluded by Italy with the Bolsheviks at Genoa

has been made public. Italy is to give the Bolsheviks a free port at Trieste and to receive similar facilities in the Black Sea ports. Further, Italy is to receive a concession of about four hundred square miles of land in the Ukraine and in the Kuban Cossacks' territory on lease for twenty-four years at a rent equivalent to seven-tenths of the produce of the land. Italy is, moreover, to have an option on oil wells " not conceded to other States " but presumably belonging to foreign companies. It remains to be seen whether these concessions can, in fact, be utilized, and whether Italian capitalists will invest money in such shadowy enterprises.