Mr. Hoover's violent attack on Soviet Russia, and his oppo-
sition to any thought of American co-operation with an administration which he stigmatises in damning language, interest me a good deal, for they recall a conversation I had with the ex-President twenty years and more ago during the Paris Peace Conference when he and Dr. Nansen were trying, in the face of every kind of difficulty, to organise relief in the form of food for Russia. I said something rather disparaging about the new regime in that country. He answered at once, and with justice, " Yes, but you have to remember what Bolshevism is a reaction against. When you realise what Czarism has been guilty of you can excuse a good deal of what has happened in a revolution against it." There is no reason whatever why the ex-President should not take a different view of Bolshevism after seeing it at work for twenty years, but, as I say, his old attitude and his new make an interesting contrast.
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