Since the Bolshevik caup d'état in 1917, the affairs of Russia have never attracted more attention than now and never has it been more difficult to form a just opinion of them. There is a strong disposition in all countries to think that the worst madness of Bolshevism has subsided, that communism in practice is dead and that the way is gradually reopening for private trade and industry. In this, the wish ig no doubt partly father to the thought, but by no means altogether. Travellers from Russia tell us that conditions are gradually returning to normal and that the world will have to revise its attitude towards the Soviet, which indeed the world seems prepared to do. In these circumstances the execution of Bishop Budkiewicz was even more 'a blunder than it may have been a crime. It serves to revive all thie old suspicion and horror and to wipe out the tolerant feeling towards the Soviet vhich was becoming noticeable. We hear of a Red Church and Red Bishops, and to-day. comes the news of a Council of Forty to hold supreme authority and obliterate the last pretences of popular control. Altogether there seems to be good reason for the attitude of the British Government as defined on March 29 by the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He said, that Britain demanded the establishment acfinitely of a civilized legal system, to which traders could look for the enforce. ment of contracts, the rendition of debts, the cessation of propaganda and the restitution of property.
And Mr. MeNeill added that even if all this weve secured, the Government were in no hurry "'to take in fellowship the hand of the Russian Government. which was iresponsible for the recent barbarities with which the civilized world was disgusted and dismayed."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.