THE OUTER WORLD AND THE SOVIETS 271
Nor has this attitude of the English had any disagreeable
consequences for them; they have, in their commercial trans-
actions with Russia, throughout been able to secure the same
conditions as, say, France or the United States.
That this is actually the case is confirmed by the various
paragraphs of the recently concluded Anglo-Russian provisional
trade agreement; above all, two innovations which were not
included in the old treaty. One of these is a clause by which the
Soviet Union is bound from year to year, to 1937 inclusive,
either to buy more goods in Great Britain than hitherto, or at
least gradually to adjust the sales of its goods in Great Britain
to its purchases in the British market, till the trade balance,
until now unfavourable to Britain, is more or less equalized.
The second innovation is a concession to the Ottawa agree-
ments, by which, as is known, Great Britain undertook to
restrict those foreign imports which were calculated to injure
her trade with her Dominions. In the new Anglo-Russian
treaty it is laid down that Britain has the right even to suspend
the most-favoured-nation clause conceded to the Soviet Union
in the case of those categories of goods in which the Soviet
Union might employ dumping methods. These important
concessions, and, further, the granting of the British demand
to be allowed to supply British citizens living in Russia with
food supplies and goods from abroad free of duty—a demand
which met with especially prolonged resistance in Moscow—
clearly prove the correctness of the view that Great Britain's
energetic measures against the Soviet Government in the affair
of the condemned British engineers has in no way injured, but,
on the contrary, strengthened England's position in dealing
with Moscow. This lesson should be taken to heart elsewhere
to-day.
But in the case of England^ too, it must be pointed out that
a considerable section of public opinion and the press is occupied
almost exclusively with Soviet achievements and not at all
with the negative aspects of Soviet life. This h, among otters,