There is no word of condemnation for Poland because she signed the Peace of Riga in October, 1920. In fact, she was officially advised to make peace with Lenin. But abandoning the fight and establishing official relations with Moscow were used against the Baltic Sea republics as reasons for considering them pro-Bolshevist and for withholding recognition of their independence. Latvia and Lithuania had to follow the lead of Esthonia and Finland, and anticipated the Russo-Polish treaty by a few months. The treaties have now been published. They contain no provisions more advantageous to the Bolshevists than those of the Russo-Polish Treaty of Riga. The British worked as strenuously as their allies to prevent Lenin from getting the Esthonians to make peace; but, once the treaty was signed, they accepted the situation and sought to make the best of it. Not being under the spell of the quixotism that seems to inspire our State Department in its foreign policy, and having no valid reason, as the French had, to maintain the integrity of Russia and refuse to deal with Bolshevism until money owed by the old régime was paid or acknowledged as a legitimate obligation, the British recognized the independence of the Baltic Sea republics and entered into diplomatic relations with them. Italy, impatient for some solution, no matter what, of the Russian imbroglio, followed Great Britain’s lead. France did not dare to stand out against _de facto_ recognition. To abstain from diplomatic intercourse with the Baltic Sea republics would have been to renounce the economic exploitation of these countries in favor of the British. So the Baltic representatives were received at the Quai d’Orsay, and French diplomats were then able to work at Libau and Riga and Reval to prevent a British trade and banking monopoly in Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, and to throw a monkey-wrench into the works of the British naval machine which aimed at the supremacy of the Baltic Sea.