Reply to Britain

From the desk of Christian Rakovsky, Bolshevik Charge d'Affaires in London, to the desk of Georg Tchitcherin, Bolshevik Commissar for Foreign Affairs in Moscow, is about 1,600 miles as the crow flies. By means of the wireless, the brusque message (TIME, Dec. 1) of the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Austen Chamberlain, sped across the intervening space in next to no time; and the messages of Georg to Austen sped back by the same route. All this took place within a few days.

The messages of Comrade Tchitcherin, two in number, deplored the British Government's action in abrogating the Russian Treaties, negotiated painfully by Premier MacDonald; it tacitly declined, however, to accept any responsibility for the "discontent" that the rejection will cause in Russia and Britain, stating that the Bolshevik Government "has displayed a maximum of good-will and concessions" in connection with the treaties.

The most significant part of the second letter repudiated the contention that the Third or Communist Internationale is connected with the Government of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Said the Commissar: "I am instructed by my Government to reiterate the declarations repeatedly made as to the complete political and administrative independence of the Communist Internationale from the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. My Government has never undertaken, and cannot undertake, to refuse the right of asylum to the Communist Internationale or to any other working-class organization. Still less, can it undertake to exercise pressure upon them."