Happy Man!

Russia may be facing her worst food shortage since 1921 (TIME, Sept. 12).* She may be turning the lives of millions of comrades topsy turvy (see above). But Russia remained last week the land of outrageous contrasts, the One Sixth of the World which dwarfs mere generalities. Russia was making one architect so wealthy and so happy last week that his good luck gave him the jitters.

"Many times of late I have awakened in the night, terrified lest my good fortune was a dream!" breathlessly declared 28-year-old Hector O. Hamilton, returning briefly to Manhattan last week from Mos cow.

"I live in a peach of a suite in Moscow at the Hotel National!" enthused Mr. Hamilton. "All of the Soviet officials I have dealt with are cultured and really swell persons! They are paying me so much that in three years I shall be independently wealthy. My salary is paid monthly in American money and I have special permission to take money out of Russia. I tell you it's a paradise for an architect like me!"

Obscure in Manhattan was Hector O. Hamilton until, last March, his design for the Soviet Union's new Palace of Soviets suddenly won Red favor in competition with work submitted by eight world-great modernist architects, notably happy Josef Urban (TIME, March 14).

Lucky Mr. Hamilton was able to announce last week that in addition to the Palace of Soviets he has designed for Russia "the World's Largest Stadium which must be completed in time for the International Workers' Olympiad next August"; 15 other stadiums; and a 22-story Physical Culture Building.

"They have 1,200 men and women working now on excavations for the Palace of Soviets," cried Hector O. Hamilton. "It will be ridiculous--positively ridiculous-- if American firms do not obtain at least $20,000,000 worth of orders in connection with the projects I am undertaking for Russia."

* "Food conditions, in the opinion of Russians are the worst since the famine of 1921," cabled Chicago Daily News' William H. Stoneman last week. "The clothing supply is still inadequate... Peasants fron the impoverished countryside continue to flock to the centres, bringing bedbugs and dirty habits, disrupting sanitary arrangements..."

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