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Show THREATENS A CRISIS. 'I'll.- A in, -i i, -mi inli.-y nf givinj; the liohlim iki I lie licMii'I'it (it thn doubt limy : ti) st'iiuiii ,-ons,.qiit-iuiea, mid yet it miiy lie Hie only polii-y advisable at this lime. If they lietrjiy tlio allies, t us tliey ,r,ilml,ly will, they eiuuiot es-eiipe es-eiipe the diminution of their guilt. And if I hey lire iletermineil to help Germany Ger-many to the utmost of their ability, mi 1 1 1 1 v be sure tlmt our jmliey of kindly toleration is the one tiling that I hey ,1 it ,ei.ire. Tliey U'OulJ much irel'er our enniily in the ein'nmstanees iiinl woubl Iry to tfoad u.s to hostile n, -ts. The arrest of Charles S. Smith, the St. Louis 1 engineer beloniny to the Stevens l'nreos in Russia, may have been a mistake, but there may be something some-thing sinister about it. It may be the i'irsl step in a Holslievikl movement to enrape he United Stales an, I bring fin-Hi reprisals. .It is easy to sec that the Hol-duniki could proiluee an intolerable intol-erable situation. Any or all of our engineers tnijht be nrreste,l ami charged with espionajio or '.anything else which appealed to the Bolsheviki as most serviieable for their purposes. There nii.uht be moek trials and severe sontenies, even death. In that event the Untied States would be drawn into a situation of baffling difficulty. If we t-oubl rely on the good faith of I.eniue and Trotzky, it would be unnecessary un-necessary to harbor fears of this kind, but the trust we van put in them can be gauged by the statement of Trotzky Trot-zky to the effect that the United States l;o vriunent offered the services of the American engineers to the Bolsheviki fioverumeut. The statement was utterly ut-terly tube, for our engineers were already al-ready at work in Russia whilo Ker-ensky Ker-ensky was in power. It is the bad faith of Trotzky, disclosed dis-closed on so many occasions, that renders ren-ders the stay of Americans in Russia sn critical. Vi'e may be sure that if the (lermau agents can embroil them it w ill be- done, and from whatever evidence evi-dence we have we can but conclude that Trotzky will lend himself as a willing inslrument in whatever treacherous treach-erous enterprises the Teutons devise. Trot.ky, whose real name, has a Germanic Ger-manic tinge according to the London 1'ost, it is l.ronstein was employed as a reporter on the Xovi Alir, a radical b'ussian .journal of .'ew York City, which was subsidised by the Gorman propaganda. The A on Igel papers dis-i dis-i loscl Unit certain amounts of the Teutonic Teu-tonic --slush fund" in this country hail been aid to he journal on which Trot-'ky Trot-'ky worked up to the time he was sent to b'ussia. What interests financed the trip of this reporter, whose salary nns $1'J a week, have not yet been revealed. re-vealed. Leniiie, who seems to bo the follower rather than the leader of Trotzky, Trot-zky, iviis in Switzerland at the time of the Russian revolution, and was provided pro-vided with a s-r.ecial train bv the Ge--n, an government to take him fuid a number of his friends through Germany on their way to Sweden end Russia. It Is the character of the two men. who seem to be nothing more .nor less than paid Comma agents, that must uive ris-- to grae anticipations in Washingro'v F-ut whether a reversal of our conciliatory policy toward the Kolsheviki is expedient at this time is a question for earnest discussion. It is perhaps just as well to Vatch events -patiently for a short time before arriving arriv-ing at a decision. |