r concessions, obtained under the old regime,
and which purposes obtaining further concessions, is strongly in favor
of recognizing the Bolshevists as a _de facto_ government. In
consideration of the _visa_ of these old concessions by Lenin and
Trotzky and the grant of new rights for the exploitation of rich mineral
territory, they would be willing to finance the Bolshevists to the tune
of forty or fifty million dollars. And the Bolshevists are surely in
need of money. President Wilson and his supporters, it is declared, are
decidedly averse from this pretty scheme."

That President Wilson would naturally set his face against any such
deliberate compromise between Mammon and lofty ideals it was superfluous
to affirm. He stood for a vast and beneficent reform and by exhorting
the world to embody it in institutions awakened in some people--in the
masses were already stirring--thoughts and feelings that might long have
remained dormant. But beyond this he did not go. His tendencies, or,
say, rather velleities--for they proved to be hardly more--were
excellent, but he contrived no mechanism by which to convert them into
institutions, and when pressed by gainsayers abandoned them.

An economist of mark in France whose democratic principles are well
known[108] communicated to the French public the gist of certain curious
documents in his possession. They let in an unpleasant light on some of
the whippers-up of lucre at the expense of principle, who flocked around
the dwelling-places of the great continent-carvers and lawgivers in
Paris. His article bears this repellent heading: "Is it true that
English and American financiers negotiated during the war in order to
secure lucrative concessions from the Bolsheviki? Is it true that these
concessions were granted to them on February 4, 1919? Is it true that
the Allied governments played into their hands?"[109]

The facts alleged as warrants for these questions are briefly as
follows: On February 4, 1919, the Soviet of the People's Commissaries in
Moscow voted the bestowal of a concession for a railway linking
Ob-Kotlass-Saroka and Kotlass-Svanka, in a resolution which states "(1)
that the project is feasible; (2) that the transfer of the concession to
representatives of foreign capital may be effected if production will be
augmented thereby; (3) that the execution of this scheme is
indispensable; and (4) that in order to accelerate this solution of the
question the persons desir