it;--we have neither the incentive nor the means for doing the work on a
sufficient scale. Germany, on the other hand, has the experience, the
incentive, and to a large extent the materials for furnishing the
Russian peasant with the goods of which be has been starved for the
past five years, for reorganizing the business of transport and
collection, and so for bringing into the world's pool, for the common
advantage, the supplies from which we are now so disastrously cut off.
It is in our interest to hasten the day when German agents and
organizers will be in a position to set in train in every Russian
village the impulses of ordinary economic motive. This is a process
quite independent of the governing authority in Russia; but we may
surely predict with some certainty that, whether or not the form of
communism represented by Soviet government proves permanently suited to
the Russian temperament, the revival of trade, of the comforts of life
and of ordinary economic motive are not likely to promote the extreme
forms of those doctrines of violence and tyranny which are the children
of war and of despair.

Let us then in our Russian policy not only applaud and imitate the
policy of non-intervention which the Government of Germany has
announced, but, desisting from a blockade which is injurious to our own
permanent interests, as well as illegal, let us encourage and assist
Germany to take up again her place in Europe as a creator and organizer
of wealth for her Eastern and Southern neighbors.

There are many persons in whom such proposals will raise strong
prejudices. I ask them to follow out in thought the result of yielding
to these prejudices. If we oppose in detail every means by which Germany
or Russia can recover their material well-being, because we feel a
national, racial, or political hatred for their populations or their
Governments, we must be prepared to face the consequences of such
feelings. Even if there is no moral solidarity between the
nearly-related races of Europe, there is an economic solidarity which we
cannot disregard. Even now, the world markets are one. If we do not
allow Germany to exchange products with Russia and so feed herself, she
must inevitably compete with us for the produce of the New World. The
more successful we are in snapping economic relations between Germany
and Russia, the more we shall depress the level of our own economic
standards and increase the gravity of our own domestic