Relations With Germany

At Moscow last week the Russo-German Trade Treaty (TIME, Oct. 12) was signed by Acting Foreign Minister Litvinov and the President of the Russian Treaty Negotiating Committee, M. Ganetski, for the Soviet Union; and by the Ger. man Ambassador, Count Brock-dorff-Rantzau, and the President of the German Committee, Herr von Kerner, for Germany.

Consisting of 80 printed pages and 20 appended notes, the treaty ambitiously sets out to regulate the whole status of Russo-Gerrnan economic relations. Two provisions seem of especial interest: 1) Germany fully and specifically grants recognition to the Soviet Foreign Trade Monopoly; 2) the Soviet Union guarantees extraterritoriality* rights to German nationals, in accordance with promises made by the Soviet Trade Delegation to Germany.

For the rest, the treaty contains an industrial property agreement, a railroad agreement, a commercial navigation clause, a taxation agreement, an arbitration court proviso.

Russians, attempting to put a cheerful face upon the Soviets' failure to throw a monkey wrench into the Security Pact Conference at Locarno (see INTERNATIONAL) declared: "Germany is signing a commercial treaty at Moscow with her right hand, a forced political agreement at Locarno with her left."

*Extraterritoriality" (or, more properly, "extraterritorial jurisdiction") is a system under which the nationals of a sovereign power are allowed to remain under the same laws and institutions of their own country when abroad, instead of becoming amenable to those of the foreign locality.