Aug. 9.
Tue situation of the proposed agreement between Great Britain and the Soviet is probably without parallel. On Monday we are told definitely and unequivocally that the negotiations have broken down and no treaty will be signed. On Wednesday Mr. Ponsonby rushes into the House of Commons in a state of great excitement and incoherence, announces that agreement has been reached after all, that the Russians have signed and that Great Britain is going to sign on the morrow. Mr, Ponsonby's statement was possibly more intelligible in full than it was telegraphed form, though to sign on the morrow something of which he had not a ghost of an idea that night," it does not look as if he made himself very clear. The: details of the bargain are as yet quite obscure. But three essential points stand out very plainly: that the Government's own claims have been put on the shelf in: view of the impossibility "of any reeoncilement with the Soviet's counterclaims—we have never been told! what these are and it would be most_ interesting to know; that the Soviet are to. negotiate with British bondholders and other claimants—which looks pretty. rough on the latter; and that eventually the British Government proposes to guarantee a loan tothe Soviet, out of which whatever modicum of satis faction bondholders had been able to squeeze out of the Reds would be paid. And that.is really the only thing that matters, the one thing which the Soviet delegates came to London to secure.
It is worth while looking, back over the very fragmentary news vouchsafed regarding the conference, in order to realize how insistent the Red delegates have always been on a loan, while as steadily refusing to comply with the conditions required normally for the raising of one. It may be recalled that, on April 18, leading London bankers sent to the Prime Minister memorandum on certain principles which the Soviet must accept if it wished to restore its credit in Britain, These included recognition by Moscow of public and private debts to British subjects; restoration of private property taken from foreigners; sanctity of private contracts; private property to be freed from the danger of confication; traders to be permitted to deal direct with private firms in Russia without Government interference; no communist propaganda, The meaning of the memorandum was quite plain, If the Soviet wished to borrow money in Britain, it would be the bankers who would have to find it and these were the only, terms on which they would do so. This memorandum raised a howl of execration and repudiation in Russia and no Bolshevik speaker, whether in Russia or London, has ever referred to it without declaring that in no circumstances would its terms be accepted. On April 14 the conference was opened, and very soon the Soviet's real purpose in coming to London peeped out. On April 25 the All Russian Council of Trade Unions issued a statement that private property would never be restored, but that if Britain would grant the Soviet credits, "a moderate percentage" of them would be applied to paying some of Britain's claims. On April 26 Comrade Rakovsky, the leader of the Red delegates, sent a communique to the English newspapers, urging a Joan asthe only means of solving Russia's pre-war debts, but reiterating that the bankers' memorandum would never be accepted. On May 16 Reuter informed us that British official circles were quite satisfied with the course of the negotiations, but a difficulty had arisen over the mutual claims of the British and Soviet Governments.
On May 20, that is the date of: the telegram, the Red delegates point-blank asked the British for a losing; out of it they would pay. back 2 lump sum to cover Russia's pre-war debts, but: these must -be pared down,' owing to the general depreciation of Russian assets. and no accumulation of interest could be. allowed. The British delegates: replied that their Government: would regard sympathetically' without permission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.