Foreign News Notes, Dec. 24, 1923

It was reported from Moscow that Bolshevik workmen had almost finished whitewashing the capital, i. e. giving it a coat of white paint. Said The New York Times: “The making white of the outside will not allow the Western World to condone the atrocities that have been committed behind them nor to see these whitewashed walls as other than whited sepulchres holding memories of dead men’s bones.”

In consequence of the murder of Mechislav Vorovsky at Lausanne (TIME, May 19) and the acquittal of one Conradi, his assassin, the Soviet Government issued instructions to the Russian police: “to revise carefully the lists of Swiss citizens now residing in Soviet territory and to make a separate list of those born in the Swiss Canton of Vaud [where the murder took place].” It was understood that the Government intends to deport all the Swiss from the Canton of Vaud who are living in Russia and all those who have recently entered the country, as a protest against the acquittal of Conradi.