ment to the last communication of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The Note of the American Government points out that trade between Russia and America can only be resumed when the former recognizes private property, guarantees "free labor" and personal inviolability and has a market large enough for the export of stores of raw material. At the same time the American press states that hopes of trade with Russia are not lost, as Lenin will rapidly change from Communism to capitalism and all the hopes of the Americans will speedily be brought about by the Bolsheviks themselves. The shortsightedness of the tools of world capital is extraordinary. …
The hopes of world capital in the fall of Communism have not been fulfilled. And now that we have reverted to peaceful reconstruction and are introducing a practical policy in order to alleviate conditions for the peasants who have suffered from failure of the harvest, they regard this as a sign that we are reverting from Communism to capitalism. It goes without saying that all the hopes of the capitalists are doomed to failure.
Later the official organ of the Moscow Government, Izvestia, made still more clear the underlying idea of all Bolshevistic diplomatic negotiations, namely that the world of capitalistic governments is being forced to recognize and to compromise with Communism as embodied in the government of Soviet Russia. The mouthpiece of the Soviets repudiates as pure nonsense the supposition that they are surrendering any Communist principles whatever. At the same time it may be noted that the Soviets have reached a perfectly clear comprehension of the nature of the American reply—even if a number of American newspapers have attempted to disguise it. The Izvestia declares:
