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Show SOVIET PRCMISES Sherwood Eddy, New York editor and publicist, and a group of Americans just returned from Russia, including Charles C. Mormon, Mor-mon, editor of the Christian Century; Rev. G. Bromley Oxnam, of Los Angeles; Dr. William II. Scarlett, dean of Christ's Cathedral in St. Louis, and a few other ministers, educators and laymen, have written a letter to President Coolidge urging the resumption of negotiations ne-gotiations for recognition of the present Soviet government of Russia. Rus-sia. These gentlemen advise that the negotiations be made on the basis of a mutually satisfactory adjustment of existing debts and claims, and a guarantee against the carrying on of a, revolutionary propaganda by the Soviet government in the United States. It would seem to a bystander that any government which had to be required to give a guarantee that it would not seek to undermine under-mine a government with which it was resuming relations, was a government gov-ernment without much reputation or probity, and that its guarantee wouldn't amount to much, anyhow. It is to be wondered whether these distinguished gentlemen have haerd anything about the assur ances which Soviet Russia gave to Great Britain along the line of refraining from propaganda and what subsequently happened when Russia was recognized by the British. They might find, if they sought to investigate, that Great Britain was subject to one of the most intensive bits of propagandising in the history of the world, a program which reached its height in the general strike in England which was frustrated by the inherent solid sense of the British people. Any guarantee which the Soviets would give us could be worth no more than the one given Britain and probably not so much as we are naturally a more sentimental and innocent people in a diplomatic di-plomatic sense than the English. Undoubtedly this group of American gentlemen are of the sentimental and innocent sort. In visiting Russia they were of course taken charge of by the wily gentlemen at the head of the government who saw to it that these strangers in a strange land would see nothing-that was not good for them to: see that is, good for them to see from the soviet standpoint. It ia the sentiment of ninety-five per cent of the American people peo-ple that; we have no dealings with the Russians until they get a government gov-ernment of probity and it is fortunate indeed that this is the viewpoint view-point of the national administration. |