Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-03-29
Should the United States
RECOGNIZE Soviet Russia?

Recognize OOD7et RUSSIA:
TN HIS cogent and well-tempered answer to
\ the appeal of American members of the
Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom, that the United States recog-
nize the Soviet government of Russia, Secre-
tary Hughes set forth certain principles from
which there can hardly be reasonable dissent.
The basic question in the recognition Of
government, he said, is whether it shows
ability and disposition to discharge interna-
tional obligations" That it should be stable,
is readily granted; but it should be that and
more. What would avail mere stability if it
were stability in the prosecution of policy
of reputation and confscation. Good
faith in the discharge of international obliga-
tons is of essential Importance because words
are easily spoken. Of what avail is it to speak
of assurances, if valid obligations and rights
repudiated and property is confiscated?"
Thus judged, is the Soviet regime of Russia
entitled to recognition? The facts of the
case render an irrefutable no. In the faciIe
lexicon of Lenine and Trotzky there is no
such term as international obligation" To
them the Capitalist governments of Europe
and of America are institutions not to be
dealt with in good faith but to be under
mined by Bolshevist propaganda and de-
stroyed by revolution. Lenine himself it was
who declared, at the last Congress of the
Third Internationa1e, "Revolutionists of all
countries must learn the organization, the
planning the method and the substance of
revolutionary work. Then, I am convinced,
outlook of the world revolution will not be
good, but excellent" In like vein did Trotzky
avow, last autumn at the Moscow Congress Of
the Russian Communist Youths, This means,
comrades, that the revolution is coming in
Europe as well as in America, Systematically,
step by step, stubbornly, and with crashing
Of teeth in both camps. 1t will be long, pro-
tracted, cruel and sanguinary." And thus
Zinoviev: 1.-THE eternal in the Russian revo-
luton is the fact that it is the beginning of
world revolution" If these leaders are not
entitled to speak for Sovietism, who is? If
from them we cannot learn it's attitude and its
purpose, to whom shall We go for it's inter
probation? And these, with their hand
against every government as fatefully as
Ishmael's was against every man, are the soul
and substance of the regime for which Amer
lean recognition is asked
Well does Mr.. Hughes urge that this is not
a question of economics, not question "ot
the rich or the poor" but "a question Of
principle" A nation standing for the truths
and the rights upon which ours is founded
and in which it has it's being, could not hon
estly lend encouragement to system that is
committed, in scorn Of those truths, to the
destruction of those rights. 1t has been ar
gued that we should recognize Soviet Russia
as a matter of commercial interest; that in
not doing so we miss profitable business
Lloyd George unanswered upon that theory
for Great Britain and undertook commercial
pact with Moscow But the treaty, stipulat
ing that the Soviet power should refrain
from any attempt by military action o.
propaganda to encourage the people of Ash;
in any form of action hostile to British inter
ests or the British Empire" turned out to b.
but scrap of paper while Soviet intrigue
against the British who in good faith sough