THE SHORTEST WAY.

The proposal of Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, self-styled "Ambassador" from Soviet Russia, that he be permitted, on behalf of the government he represents, to furnish transportation back to Russia for those Russians who have become persona non grata to the United States, is one that should meet with instant and unqualified approval. If Bolsheviks and other agitators, dissatisfied with life under the Stars and Stripes, claim that lovely Russia is the only real place to live, by all means let them go there, and if their government wants to pay their traveling expenses, so much the better. As long as an alien lives peaceably in our country, obeying laws that most people believe are just, he should be urged to remain. But when he says that unless we let him make our country over according to the Bolshevik pattern, he will leave us to our bourgeois fate, he should be informed that nobody wants to keep him here for a moment; and he should be shown the shortest way to that land whose freedom and beauties he extolls so highly through the medium of the playful bomb and festive pistol.

The United States, however, rather quixotically declines to recognize the Soviet Government even by so much as accepting Mr. Marten's offer. This is rather like biting one's nose to spite one's face. Here is an opportunity to get rid of a large number of undesirables, "thousands" of whom, according to the Russian representative, have requested passports to return to the peace and tranquility of Bolshevism. No international conventionalities or red tape should be permitted to interfere with the rats' abandonment of our "sinking" Ship of State. Give them their passports and God bless 'em!