AMERICAN PROBLEMS by WILLIAM E.BORAH 1924

RECOGNITION OF RUSSIA 213
greater ex-
terests of the Russian people will mean a still
tension of that good will toward the American people—
by-product of a right action on our part to which we will
be as clearly entitled as we were to the happy results of
Lincoln's great policy toward the South.
* * # * * * * *
My own opinion is influenced very largely by another
fact, which many people consider almost as irrevelent, but
which to me is the deciding weight. It is that under the
Soviet Government the Russian people have at last gotten
what they have always demanded above all else; what
even Czarist governments have promised them but have
failed to accomplish; what all
the leaders that have since
arisen—Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel—all have promised
and all have failed to do ; that is, under the Soviet Government
the peasants have gotten the land. Under all other
governments the peasants got only promises that were
never kept.
* *.* * * * * *
I have also a statement made by ex-Gov.
James P. Goodrich, of Indiana, who, as we all
know, has been very much in Russia for the
last two years. He says
Out of the present unfortunate situation a settled responsible
government shall emerge. It will be a democracy
and not an autocracy, either of the Czar or the proletariat.
The peasant never did accept communism. He
is by instinct, training, and tradition individualistic and
capitalistic.