''Satisfied"

"What did they find, dear?" asked many a British wife last week, as her husband chomped his breakfast kidney and scrutinized the morning newspaper.

"A plenty . . . a great plenty . . ." answered Conservative husbands complacently. But husbands with Liberal and Labor views barked: "Nothing!"

That which was to be found was an allegedly stolen secret War Office document. To find it, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Secretary of State for Home Affairs, had sent a swarm of operatives from Scotland Yard (TIME, May 23) to seize and search the imposing five-story building near the Bank of England which is occupied by the Soviet Russian Trade Delegation, and by Arcos, Ltd., the commercial agents for all Russian cooperative societies. Jostled and searched were over 1,000 clerks, more than half of them English. Dynamited, and rifled were several safes. Then, ransacking continued. . . .

Scotland Yard did not find the paper last week.

Placidity. The sheer and brazen placidity of Sir William Joynson-Hicks was worthy of note (almost of applause) as he justified last week in the House of Commons, his order setting policemen to dynamiting safes. Sir William admitted frankly that the missing paper had not been found. "However," said he, "I am satisfied that the document is or was in the Arcos premises at the time when I authorized the raid."

Interpellated, the Home Secretary simply stuck to his story that he was sure the document had been, or was, or might still be in Arco House. The cream, the flower of Scotland Yard detectives had failed to find it; but Sir William was "satisfied."

Probably this satisfaction was genuine. There may yet be produced other documents allegedly seized at Arcos House of so positively carmine a purport that, waved judiciously before John Bull, they may enable the British Conservative party to win another election by exactly the same ruse as last time.* What are the chances that forged "Red" documents may have been planted?

Protest. The Soviet Government transmitted an official protest to the British Foreign Office, last week, and incidentally employed the name Sovietia, as an apt abbreviation for The Union Of Socialist Soviet Republics ("Russia"). Sovietia called the attention of Great Britain to three postulated facts: 1) Although the Scotland Yard police had a warrant to search Arcos, Ltd., they did not present the warrant until one hour after they seized the premises by main force. 2) Representatives of the Soviet Trade Delegation were not allowed by the police to remain present while their offices and effects were searched. Thus was destroyed all possibility that duplicate lists of all articles and papers removed could have been exchanged between the police and the Soviet Trade Delegation, no mere corporation, but a body with diplomatic status. 3) The Soviet note therefore contends that the British police "deprived the search of any formal significance" by failing "to provide . . . even the most elementary legal guarantees."

Significance. These Soviet charges so far as the underlying facts are concerned, square with the virtually unanimous reports of correspondents. Whether the Soviet conclusions be accepted or not was matter last week for individual taste or judgment.

To complicate the issue it became clear that Sovietia and Great Britain take opposite views of whether the Soviet Trade Delegation does or does not enjoy full diplomatic immunity under the Sovietia-British Trade Agreement of 1921. If the meaning of an agreement signed by two nations is obscure to them after six years of mutual contemplation, it may be seen how remote is the chance of an amicable understanding between Sovietia and Great Britain over the present raid.

Last week Scotland Yard translators were not yet more than well started on the mass of documents before them. "Revelations," if any were to come, seemed in abeyance.

*The so-called "Zinoviev Letter" (never proved authentic) was given to the press by Conservatives (TIME, Oct. 6, 1924, et seq.) and resulted in the Labor Cabinet of Premier Ramsay MacDonald being swept from power on the suspicion that M. Grigory Zinoviev, Director of the Third International (Russian Propaganda Bureau), was inciting Britons to a Communist uprising. Whether the letter was genuine or not, it helped alter the whole course of British politics from Left to Right.