Former senator Brookhard, at present playing the role of a commercial agent who solicits markets for disposal of American farm produce, has finally succeeded in finding one certain and very large market. In the newspapers he declares that Soviet Russia is the market and that non-recognition of the Soviet government is the only obstacle which interferes with the development of normal trade relations between the two countries. The former senator, being a radical, has seemingly absorbed a good deal of the Soviet propaganda and now reasons not as a businessman but as an avowed Bolshevik.

It is true, indeed, that the Russian people can consume every bit of surplus goods that there is in America. This we know from the letters we receive from our native country. The question, however, arises: who is going to pay the American farmers for their produce and with what? Perhaps Mr. Brookhard thinks 2that the hungering Russian peasant without even a shirt on his back will pay. O, no! The former senator declares that the Soviet government will pay provided it can get the necessary credits. The Soviet government, says he, has never failed to meet its financial obligations. But from what source will the Bolsheviks get the revenue to meet the credit obligations to the United States? Mr. Brookhard advisedly refrains from giving any answer to this question, lest he fall into a trap. Brookhard knows quite well that the Bolsheviks neither sow nor reap, and get along on what they take by force from the hungry peasants, who, even under Bolshevism, deprived of every incentive, through force of momentum still continue to scratch the soil.

The former senator thus finds himself caught in a vicious circle. He wishes to give the hungry peasant a piece of bread with one hand and then take it back with the other, plus interest. It may be that the Bolsheviks will continue to redeem their promissory notes on time as long as the peasant lasts. It may, perhaps, happen that the Bolsheviks, being generous people with somebody else's money, will even pay with usurious interest their American credit installments, 3for they are doing it now. However, we doubt very much that such commerce, conducted at the expense of dying-out Russian peasantry, will last.

Extension of credits and disposal of farm produce surpluses, even if carried out on a very large scale, will not feed the peasants; on the contrary, the last piece of bread will be taken away from those of them who manage to survive and provide for the immediate future.

Mr. Brookhard, perhaps, is a successful politician, but he is not a statesman, nor a businessman with foresight. He cannot see the forest because of the trees. The Bolshevik agents have crammed his head so full of their propaganda that he has fallen victim to their blandishments and deceitful promises. It is hardly advantageous to any country, particularly not to the United States, to keep a country with 160 million people in a condition of chronic famine, gradual attrition and certain eventual extinction. The temporary and only apparent benefits which the United States may derive from the credit trade with the Bolsheviks in a short time will be only a drop in the sea of losses 4and wastage which will inevitably result from a total exhaustion of Russia and her elimination from world trade.

If Mr. Brookhard represented interests of some private concern his attitude toward Russian trade would be quite understandable, for a businessman is guided only by considerations of private gain and is not concerned with national interests. But he appears in the role of a Government representative, a statesman, to whom is entrusted the weighty and very complex task of bringing back prosperity through revival of industry and disposal of surplus goods. Solution of this task, as is understood by everybody, will require not two or three years but many years of effort. The prosperity of the United States, if it is ever to come back, is closely bound with the well-being of the peoples in the other countries, particularly in those countries which lag in their industrial development, and more particularly in such huge countries as China, Russia and India.

In the final analysis, trade is but an exchange of goods. Despite the short-sighted expectations entertained by Mr. Brookhard, hunger-stricken Russia will 5never be a factor in the solution of American economic problems. The policies advocated by him will not mitigate the economic crisis afflicting this country, but, on the contrary, will render it more acute in a very short time.