BOLSHEVIKS WANT PEACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17335, 5 December 1919, Page 7

BOLSHEVIKS WANT PEACE.

VIEW OF ALLIES' AIMS. CONCESSIONS AS PRICE. COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE. By Telegraph— Association— (Received 6.30 p.m.) A. and N.Z. LONDON. Dec. 1. A correspondent of the British Labour newspaper, the Daily Herald, interviewed M. Litvinoff, the Soviet delegate at the Copenhagen conference. M. Litvinoff denied that Russia had relations with Britain or the United States. The real reason for Allied intervention, he said, could be summed in the word concessions, and the Bolsheviks, being realists, preferred to grant concessions to wasting Russian strength in endless war. He demanded a full investigation regarding alleged atrocities in Russia. In another interview, M. Litvinoff said that the Soviet Government was prepared to exchange British prisoners and permit British nationals to depart from Russia if proper provision were made for the Russians now abroad who were cut off by the blockade, and also if they be accorded free communication with Russia, and the Soviet Government be permitted to protect the interests of Russians abroad. Denmark is negotiating with M. Litvinoff for the exchange of Danes imprisoned in Russia for Russian soldiers in Jutland, and for interned people willing to be repatriated. OVERTURES TO BRITAIN. ECONOMIC HELP WANTED. BOASTINGS FROM MOSCOW. A. and N.. LONDON. Dec. L The correspondent of the Sunday Express at Reval received a statement from M. Tchicherin, Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, declaring that Mr. Lloyd George's peaceful speeches was the first step towards a sane policy to prepare the way for a good understanding between Russia and Britain. Mr. Lloyd George had previously yielded to the influence of narrow-minded French politicians, dominated by an ignorant reactionary military clique, but was now influenced by British Labour's sympathy with Bolshevism, and also by British business men, who understand where their real interests lie. Russia wants peace, and also economic help from countries like Britain. A wireless message from Moscow boasts of "the triumphs of the Red Army in the two years' struggle against the efforts of coun-ter-revolutionaries at home and abroad to ' strangle the Soviet republic." " Our victories," it states, " have humbled the pride of haughty international capitalists who now are seemingly willing to enter into peace negotiations. Soviet Russia wants peace, and is prepared to pay its debts and grant other concessions, but it will accept no peace enslaving and strangling the republic." ——