(Contributed by ax American)
Sept. 15
America's attitude towards foreign relations is, as we think ost non-Americans will agree, obstinately correct and consistent when it is right as it is lobetinately and consistently wrong when it is wrong. A. very large proportion of the! Americans in China, we know, believe that the American attitude towards developments. in this country fs based on misinformation, misundzrscanding, and misdirected szatiment, and is therefore fundamentally and fairly consistently wrong;—so most Americans join with other foreign -ommanities in deploring what they view as the obstinate attitude of the American people and of the American [State Department in their interpretation of events in China, "These sams critics must, how-lever, rejoice in the consistent American aversion to anything ike compromise with Russian Ishevism as expressed in stronger and stronger statements of policy over the period of ten years that have elapsed since the revolution of 1917, and therefore confess that an obsti: ate ad ference to 2 fixed programme, peal can divert the public jis very useful at times.
These thoughts are of course suggested by the letter from the United States Chamber of.
Commerce to an agent of-Standard Oil interests, which was quoted from the "Times" in our news columns on Tuesday morning and was also quoted and commented upon by Mr. H. P. King in the correspondence columns. This, letter, our readers will have noted, puts the whole American commercial world on record as being irrevocably opposed to relations with Soviet!
Russia which would seem condone the international bad faith of the U.S. S. R. and the ross misgovernment of the Russian people by the Bolshevist dictatorship, and—giv: the Standard Oil representative who had just been to Moscow a fairly sharp reminder that}
American commercial _interests generally were entirely out of sympathy with his manoeuvres.
The fact that the Standard Oil representatives in Russia are supposed to have negotiate a bargain very favourable to American interests, a3 opposed to those of other Powers havi some prior claim upon Russian oil fields. carries no weight whatever with the United States:
Chamber of Commerce where a involved; is no admire. will be remembered that the American Federation of Labour, has been equally obstinate in rejecting. in the harshest language that Moscow has ever: had the good fortune to hear, every! overture of friendship and every loffer of skilled assistance in the supposed war of labour upon capital. American labour has never been seriously—tempted, ike foolish labour in other industrial countries, to blink at facts and accept at face value Moscow's protestations of love for the world proletariat, but thas come back with expressions lof increasing distrust and contempt at every ingratiating offer Jof fellowship that Bolshevist, tyranny has made in the name of wretched, stupified Russian labour. With the exception of 'a few men like Senator Borah, in whose sincerity we simply cannot put faith, the United States Congress has been just as solidly and consistently opposed for ten years to anything like compromise with the Soviet; and the State Department's attitude has of course never wavered. 80 have in America organized capital, organized labour, and ithe legislative and diplomatic branches of government facing Russia with all of the Puritan' horror of compromise with the forces of evil, which is decidedly remarkable when one considers how easily America can be persuaded to champion any cause that pretends to belief in liberty jor to represent a "liberal" force in the world.
This simply proves that once undeceived, America can convert herself from being the softest and most gullible friend of alleged "liberty" into the hardest and most unrelenting enemy of ithe would-be deceiver. To understand America's almost fierce contempt for the Soviet regime, jone has to remember how, for generation or more before the Russian revolution, America thrilled from coast to coast with every mention of Russian "emancipation," and opened its: arms with an' almost tearful welcome to every Red exile. Millions were almost as freely contributed to the cause of "liberty" in Russia to the Irish cause. The de-of the Tsarist arm! pan in Manchuria was upon unholy Imperial Russia for the failure of the 1905 revolu-
The establishment of the! was an occasion for enthusiastic rejoicing, and the Kerensky revolution was looked upon og the final vindication of America's faith in democracy. Every effort was made to put the best possible construction upon the Bolshevist coup, and long jatter diplomatic intercourse was admittedly impossible a Chicago socialist, Raymond Robbins, was kept in Moscow as the State Department's correspondent in ithe dwindling hope that the Reds would still evolve somethingelike democracy and make it possible for America to resume friendly, relations. The final disillusion ment was complete and final, and ithe reaction all the more intense, because of the sentiment that had been lavished upon a supposely "liberal" movement in Russia. Characteristically Am. lerica is therefore as relentlessly sentimentally in favour of" Russian revolution.
In our opinion the same revulsion of feeling is inevitably in store for China unless the char-laeter and manner of the Chinese revolution changes and, if it does come, China will find America as inflexibly prejudiced against her as she was ever] ostentatiously friendly. The ig|hopelessly weak attitud> which the United States Government] has adopted towards events ike the recent Nanking affair will than seem in strange contrast to the wholly uncompromis-_ jing and unconciliatory sternness into which the American people will force their government, and suggestions of friendly overtures will be as harshly denounced as, was this Standard Oil suggestion, for a trade bureau in Moscow by: the United States Chamber ° of Commerce. Most nations in their diplomacy work for a happy mean; America almost invari ably towards an extreme; 80 when we read one of these American pronouncements on Russian Bolshevism, we cannot help thinking what a shock it will be ito those Chinese who make capi-tai of America's present policy when that policy goes over to the other extreme. The U. 8. Chamber of Commerce letter on ernment of China and the Chi-
[that Government's delinquencies by reasserting full sympathy with the Russian people; and this we feel foreshadows what Am" ican attitude is going to be some day towards the "institutions which call themselves the government of China and the Chi-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.