Jan, 13.
The reports to the effect that Anglo-Soviet relations are going from bad to worse will, when the circumstances of the past four or five months are recalled, surprise nobody, It ig inevitable that they should do so, and with the arrival of Sir William Seods, British Ambassador to Moscow, in London, there is 44 distinct possibility that he will never return to his post. As it has been rightly pointed out in the "Osservatore Romano," there is rising a yrowing wave of world-wide indignation against Soviet Russia for her invasion of Finland. The Soviet Government hag just as completely put itself outside the pale of international decency as has Herr Hitler and his entourage. That indignation is as sharply felt throughout the British Empire as it is in the United States, as keenly in France as it is in the Scandinavian counties, and the democracies of the world have plainly shown that they will render all the assistance they can to Finland in its manly stand against what originally appeared to be overwhelming aggression. A great deal has been written about the alleged perfidy of M. Stalin in coming to an agreement with Herr Hitler for a non-aggression pact at a time when his ministers were in negotiation with Great Britain and France for a mutual de-Fence pact against the German threat. Much of what has been said was undoubtedly in-spited by the surprise that this development created when it was made known in August of last year. But the passage of time has clearly shown that M. Stalin was running true to form, and that the removal of M. Litvinov from the Commissarship for Foreign Affairs was actually the plainest possible notice that M, Stalin was preparing a volte face in which the old policy of collective security was to be thrown to the winds, and the Soviet preparing to sell out to the highest bidder, Tt is" also known now that part of the price which was expected of the Allies was the giving of Russia a free hand in the Baltic and the Balkans, and the Allies, not yet having descended to the depths where the sacrifice of small nations can lightly be undertaken, refused to pay the price.
They would have had a bad bargain if they had done so, as Herr Hitler now knows. Instead of securing the assistance from Moscow which it was confidently expected in Ger-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.