Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/249

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CAMOUFLAGED TRADE AGITATION
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sible. A number of well-known Englishmen have been agitating for that object by speeches and by articles in the American press. Possibly the intention is that America shall provide the credits without which the British- Soviet agreement must remain an empty form. This agitation certainly offers no reason why America should fall in with the designs of the British Government. The British Empire is threatened by the Soviet military forces around the Black Sea and in Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan and the Pamir region and by Bolshevist propaganda not only in these districts but also in Turkey, Egypt, India, and China. The foreign policies of the powerful British Labor Party as well as the Independent Liberals are thoroughly pro-Soviet. Certain groups of British capitalists fear they might get less out of Russia from a democratic and patriotic peasants' government than from the cynical diplomacy of the Bolshevists—ready to give to foreigners the title to everything in Russia, so far as this is necessary to secure the means needed to hold their power and prevent popular government. In the same way a certain school of British diplomats note that Lenin is ready to alienate Russian territory in the belief he can win it back or at least control it by instigating revolutions. These financiers and diplomatists have another view of future probabilities. In the meanwhile they are ready to take advantage, for the purposes of the British Empire, of Lenin's willingness to sign away Russia's territory, natural wealth, and industries. These are certainly among the leading motives of British opinion on Russia and so undoubtedly influence British policy—if, indeed, they do not dominate it.