The question I was invariably asked by these syndicates was, "How can payments be arranged?" To this I replied that they should send their representatives to England with carefully thought out proposals on their side, and promised to assist them to obtain official permits to enter Great Britain with this end in view. It seems our Foreign Office is still afraid of letting in Communists, whereas the Russians reply quite frankly that whenever they send Communists abroad to spread propaganda, these men go at their own risk as Englishmen, Frenchmen, ete., not as Russians, and therefore do not need the visa of the country to which they go.
The disappointing part about Russia to-day is, that no factories are working. Out of 6,000 chimneys in and around Moscow, a_ little smoke is seen issuing occasionally from probably not more than 60.
The reason for this hopeless manufacturing situation is that all the separate interests being respectively in one trust, there is no internal competition, and while that condition exists they can never expect to be successful. However, they are clever eneugh to see this, and the next move, I anticipate, will be to abolish the Vneshtorg altogether and dissolve the syndicates, and let every business proceed on its own merits as it did previously. Woe may however, be quite sure, that while these changes are being made, the Soviet will endeavour to save its face by putting announcements in the "Times" and elsewhere, such as the one which appeared in that paper on June 27 last, headed—"Soviet Foreign Trade Monopoly" which vas, of course, inserted at che request of the Monopcly itself
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.