THE OUTER WORLD AND THE SOVIETS 269
-question of the Russian famine and the necessity of rendering
assistance?
After the first spontaneous exchange of declarations of
friendship between Moscow and Paris, a most significant event
occurred in France—the discovery of a vast Bolshevik propa-
ganda and espionage organization in Paris, accompanied by
the simultaneous discovery of similar organizations in Finland,
Bulgaria and elsewhere.
Etienne Fournol explained recently in the Temps how the
French Revolution had been able to hold its own in the con-
temporary world, and added that the day might come when
historians would discover "how it was that the Soviet
diplomacy could prevail in the midst of the bourgeois system
which had threatened to destroy it." These words are worth
remembering.
While the French attitude towards the Soviet and the Russian
famine is thus primarily guided by political considerations,
economic elements also play a part, as they did formerly in the
case of Germany. Moscow skilfully foments the hope that the
old Russian war debts may after all be satisfactorily regulated
owing to the new friendship. Nevertheless, economic con-
siderations are a factor of comparatively small importance,
from the French standpoint, in the friendship with Soviet
Russia. For the Soviets the case is different; they are com-
pelled to obtain a maximum of credits and economic advantages
Juom France in exchange for their support in upholding the
territorial provisions of Versailles. The relationship thus is
similar to that between Soviet Russia and Germany, when the
latter did much to enable the Communist experiment to be
continued by the economic and to a certain extent also the
moral support which it gave to the Soviet Union in the years
after Rapallo.
Great Britain's attitude to the Soviet Union was also guided
by the two considerations mentioned above—economic and
political. It will be remembered how the representatives and