judges. And if they did break the law, how were they to be proceeded against? Were five million men to be put in prison ? They might say that only the leaders would be punished; but there was no talk of discrimination in the Bill. The Bill was more likely to produce than to prevent another general strike; it made the position of moderate men like himself, who had never advocated strikes, exceedingly difficult. Mr. Snowden's point of view was shared by his fellow-moderate, Mr. J. H. Thomas, who declared that no man on his side resented the Bill more than he did. Mr. Thomas's remarks, however, that the Bill would destroy all hope of industrial peace, and that the Government was striking a blow at those who desired peace, were simply greeted with laughter from the Conservative benches.

Mr. Lloyd George explained the ground of the Liberal opposition to the Bill, namely, that apart from its intrinsic merits or demerits, it was inopportune at the present juncture. It was a challenging and provocative measure introduced at a time when it was essential that there should be the best relations between capital and labour with a view to the recovery of their lost trade. What the country wanted was not Bills to declare general strikes illegal-most people thought they were so already-but new machinery of conciliation. It was a Bill not for trade recovery, but for Tory recovery.

The debate was summed up on behalf of the Government by the Solicitor-General, who repeated all the claims made on behalf of the Bill by Conservative speakers, and curtly dismissed the objections raised by its opponents. In the division the second reading was carried by 386 votes to 171-majority, 215. One Conservative, Lord Cavendish-Bentinck, voted against the Bill. Of the Liberals, the majority voted or were paired against the Bill, but Sir John Simon abstained from voting, and eight members of the party supported the Government.

Having given the Bill its second reading, the House of Commons proceeded without delay to discuss it in Committee. The task promised to be an arduous one, as this was the stage in which the Labour Party had an opportunity of putting into effect its threat of contesting every clause and line of the Bill; and it had, indeed, put down a host of amendments. Nothing daunted, the Government began to tackle these one by one, rejecting them all, but substituting one or two of its own to meet objections which it thought well founded.

Scarcely had Parliament settled down to the detailed discussion of the Trade Union Bill when an incident occurred which again threw the public into violent agitation, at the same time providing it with all the excitement of a first-class detective story. On May 12, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a large force of policemen in plain clothes drove up to the premises of Arcos, the Russian State trading agency, in Moorgate Street, London, and entering the

building, proceeded to search all the employees, both British and Russian, and to seize and collect all the documents in the place. No arrests were made, but the Scotland Yard authorities remained in possession of the premises for some days, rummaging in safes and going through documents. They did not confine their attention to the Arcos premises, but entered some rooms in the same building belonging to the Russian Trade Delegation, and demanded the keys of the safes. The head of the Delegation refused on the ground that the premises were protected by diplomatic immunity. The police thereupon had the safes, some of which were strongly embedded in the walls, blown open.

Immediately on hearing of the raid, on May 12, the Russian chargé d'affaires, M. Rosengolsz, lodged a protest at the Foreign Office. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs replied that the raid was no concern of his, being an action taken by the police purely on their own initiative. On the next day, May 13, Mr. Henderson asked the Home Secretary if he could give an explanation of the affair. The latter professed complete ignorance in his official capacity, but promised to supply information on the following Monday, May 16. Meanwhile, an influential section of the Press, headed by the Daily Mail, sought by means of a violent propaganda to inflame popular feeling against the Soviet Government and its agents, though the search in the Arcos building had not yet brought to light anything incriminating. It also endeavoured to involve the Labour Party in the odium, making much of the fact that Mr. Rosengolsz, after failing to receive satisfaction from the Foreign Office, had interviewed Mr. Henderson and sought his assistance.

The search came to an end at midnight on Sunday, May 15, after having lasted four full days. On the next day, May 16, the Home Secretary in the House of Commons satisfied the curiosity of members in part. It had, he said, come to his knowledge on the previous Wednesday that an important and strictly confidential document belonging to the War Office was in possession of persons employed in the premises occupied by Arcos Ltd. Accordingly, after consultation with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, he had obtained a warrant for the search of the premises under the Official Secrets Act. The missing document had not been found, but a number of other documents had been seized, and were still being examined. He promised further information when the examination should have been completed, and the Opposition resolved before taking any steps to await his next statement.

On May 17 the British chargé d'affaires in Moscow received from the Soviet Government a Note upholding and elaborating the protest already made by M. Rosengolsz. The Note insisted that the Russian Trade Delegation in England, as in all foreign countries, enjoyed full diplomatic immunity, and that the seizure

of its cipher correspondence was contrary to the express stipulations of the Trade Agreement. The raid on Arcos also a registered British firm with an annual turnover of ten millions-though it might be technically justifiable, was something unprecedented in the history of the City of London. The campaign of hate which culminated in this raid and which lately had been meeting with growing encouragement from members of the British Government, compelled the Soviet Government to ask that Government frankly whether it desired the further preservation and development of Anglo-Soviet trade relations, which would only be possible on condition of the strict observance by it of the Trade Agreement. At the same time, the Soviet Government reserved to itself the right to present demands for satisfaction for the violation of treaty rights, and for insults and material damage suffered.

When May 19 came round, the Home Secretary asked for another postponement till May 24, on the ground that the examination of the seized documents was not yet complete. The Labour Party gave vent to their impatience at the delay by demanding facilities for discussing the Home Secretary's conduct if they so desired-a request which was readily granted. On May 23 the Cabinet met to consider the whole question of Britain's relations with Russia; and fateful decisions were taken which the Premier himself announced the next day to a House of Commons crowded to its utmost capacity.

Dealing first with the actual raid on the Arcos premises, Mr. Baldwin informed the House that it was undertaken in order to recover an official and highly confidential document relating to the armed forces of Great Britain, which was known on good evidence to have been conveyed to Soviet House and there reproduced by means of a photostatic apparatus. Although the document was not recovered, a photostat room was unearthed exactly corresponding to the description given to the police, and at work in it a man known to be a secret service agent of the Soviet Government. Search in this room and in others brought to light documents which to the mind of the Government proved that Soviet House was being used for the carrying out of military espionage and subversive activities throughout the British Empire and North and South America, and that no effective differentiation of rooms and duties was observed as between the members of the Trade Delegation and the employees of Arcos. It was evident, therefore, that the Trade Delegation had broken the Trade Agreement. But the Soviet Mission had been equally guilty. The Government had in its possession a telegram dated November 12 from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Moscow to the Soviet representative in Peking, which showed conclusively that Borodin was an agent of the Moscow Government, in spite of the denials made by the Soviet authorities in Moscow and in London; further a telegram from the Soviet chargé d'affaires in London to the

Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Moscow, dated April 1, soliciting information about China for the purposes of a political campaign in this country, and suggesting the terms of a reply which would be useful for that purpose. From these breaches of the Trade Agreement and of international comity it was clear that the protest and the warning uttered by the Government to Russia three months previously had had no effect. Diplomatic relations thus deliberately and systematically abused were themselves a danger to peace, and the Government had therefore decided that, unless the House expressed its disapproval in the debate of which the Labour Party had given notice, it would terminate the Trade Agreement, require the withdrawal of the Trade Delegation and the Soviet Mission from London, and recall the British Mission from Moscow.

This announcement was received with loud Ministerial cheers. The Labour Party was somewhat taken aback to find that the Government had now nerved itself to venture on the step from which it had shrunk less than three months previously. For the moment it held its peace, reserving its comments for the debate which was to take place in a couple of days' time. Mr. Clynes simply asked the Prime Minister a few questions, the chief of which was whether the Government before coming to its decision had made any representations to the Soviet Government with a view to discussion and conference-a question which Mr. Baldwin answered in the negative.

The Russian chargé d'affaires, M. Rosengolsz, lost no time in making a spirited reply to Mr. Baldwin's charges. On the next day (May 25) an official statement was issued from the Russian Embassy, pointing out that no particle of evidence had been adduced to show either that the missing document had found its way to Soviet House, or that the Trade Delegation, or Arcos, or any of their employees had ever engaged in military espionage or any work of a similar nature. The facts on the strength of which the Premier had sought to raise prejudice against the Delegation, such as the existence of a subterranean photostatic room, and the burning of certain documents on the arrival of the police, were shown to admit of perfectly simple explanations. If one of the employees had been proved by documents found on his person to be engaged in illicit activities, this was his own private concern, and the Delegation could not be held responsible. With regard to the telegrams alleged to have been sent or received by the chargé d'affaires himself, M. Rosengolsz denied that either he or anyone else from the staff of the Embassy had either sent or received such telegrams; the telegram alleged to have been sent from the Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the Soviet representative in Peking bore on it the signs of an invention. The statement went on to point out that the rupture of diplomatic relations could not fail to have a disastrous effect on Anglo

Russian trade; for instance, it would nullify an arrangement which had just been made with the Midland Bank for financing credits on orders from the U.S.S.R. for 10,000,000l. M. Rosengolsz complained strongly that, contrary to the stipulations of the Trade Agreement, no opportunity had ever been given to him of explaining or remedying any matters of complaint, although he had stated repeatedly that he would be only too glad to co-operate in examining and settling such matters. The decision of the British Government to abrogate immediately the 1921 Agreement was not only a violation of the Agreement itself, but an arbitrary act without precedent in international relations, due only to a blind hatred of the U.S.S.R.

After considering the Premier's statement, the Parliamentary Labour Party decided that the best way to challenge the Government's action would be to bring forward a motion calling for an examination of the documents and an inquiry into the facts before a rupture was declared. The resolution was moved on May 26 by Mr. Clynes, as Mr. MacDonald, though he was now recovering from the illness with which he had been seized during his visit to America in the Easter recess, did not yet feel equal to the task. Mr. Clynes called attention to a statement which had appeared in the newspapers that morning from the representative of Arcos, and maintained that it did constitute some kind of reply to the Premier's charges, and that attention should be paid to it. The Labour Party accepted the view of the Government in this matter that Russia was in the dock, but it demanded that Russia should not be condemned without trial. Mr. Clynes dilated on the injury which would result to British trade from the rupture of the Trade Agreement, and gave a detailed list of the orders which were to have been placed on the strength of the promised ten millions credit; these, he said, would have kept 56,000 men in work for a year. The Labour Party, therefore, pressed for an inquiry, convinced that no good results could accrue to the country's interests from the carrying out of the Government's decision.

The defence of the Government's policy was made by Sir A. Chamberlain. He first belittled Mr. Clynes's fears of its effect on Anglo-Russian trade, professing to know from experience that Russian orders vanished into thin air when they were no longer needed as an instrument of policy, and stated that the Government would still give all necessary facilities for legitimate trade, only it would no longer allow Russian representatives special privileges. The Government, he said, was not prepared to accept the proposal for a Committee of Inquiry; it regarded it as a vote of censure, and if it was carried it would know how to act. The Foreign Secretary then gave the House a long list of offences committed by the Russian Government and its agents against the Trade Agreement, showing that the Government had had ample

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