These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no political interest.
AMERICANS JAILED BY MOSCOW REDS ON MERE PRETEXT
By Hector Boon.
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
The negotiations I have just described had taken about ten days, and during this time there had been several fresh arrivals at No. 10, notably Boni, the correspondent of the New York Sun, who was later thrown into jail because it was alleged he evinced too much interest in the affairs of the Third Internationale. He attended the opening of the conference in Petrograd as the guest of Radek, the Bolshevik editor.
Shortly before the advent of Boni, Mrs. Harding, an Englishwoman, the correspondent of The New York World, arrived. She was in the house exactly four hours, during which time Rozinzki, formerly a tailor in the East End of London and now a spy for the Vetchika, never left her side. On the pretext that she was to be lodged in another guest house, she was taken off in a motor car, accompanied by Mogilevski, and driven straight to the Vetchika and placed in solitary confinement.
Others Thrown Into Prison.
The same treatment was later meted out to two American correspondents, Estes and Flick, who on their arrival in Moscow were driven direct from the station to the Vetchika, where they were thrown into prison and were still there, in a semistarving condition, when I left Moscow. As in the case of Mrs. Harding, they obtained the Soviet power’s permission to enter Russia before they left Reval.
The Italian correspondent, Pennuncio, who stayed while in Moscow at No. 10, also had a dose of prison. It seems that an article appeared in his newspaper which dealt with the morale of the Red Army. Without troubling to inquire whether this had been written by him, they threw Pennuncio into prison and kept him there for ten days.
In arranging for my passport to be visaed for England I came into close contact with the Foreign Office, and in particular with one Rosenberg, a Jew, who had spent several years in London as a master tailor in an East End sweatshop. In 1917 he was secretary to Raymond Robins of the American Red Cross in Petrograd. When I arrived in Moscow he was in charge of the Western Section of the Foreign Office, and as the agent of the Vetchika had the handling of all foreigners in Russia.