The New Understanding

Joseph Stalin smiled, Joseph Davies smiled, Viacheslav Molotov smiled.* Then the special messenger from the White House shook hands warmly with his Kremlin hosts. He was off for the U.S., with his dyspepsia and pills and the wax-sealed envelope bearing Joseph Stalin's reply to Franklin Roosevelt. Everyone, agreed that Mission II to Moscow, its nature still a secret, had gone famously.

The smiles in Moscow matched smiles in London and Washington, not only over the good fellowship of Joe Davies and Joe Stalin but over something bigger it reflected: the growing good fellowship of Russia, Britain and the U.S. Success on the battlefronts and the Comintern's dissolution (TIME, May 31), heady as a couple of beakers of vodka, had put all in jovial humor. The statesmen saw what a long way the three Allies had come within a year. The crusty old reserve was melting. A new understanding seemed dawning. Pushkin & Byron. The keynoter was Russia. Gone was yesteryear's cry for a second front, yesterday's disdain for the Anglo-American military effort. The Soviet press now gave due and admiring credit to American Lend-Lease, to the air blows over western Europe, to assembling invasion armies. The Russians were told that their future must be linked to that of their allies. English had become a primary instead of secondary language in the schools. Red Star, organ of the Army, capped the new feeling with a poem by Sergei Vassiliev, entitled Pushkin and Byron:

Two bards with ringing voices

Inspire us with the warlike spirit of the brave . . .

Two mighty nations have bared their swords in darkest night In mutual struggle for the common cause and the common glory.

Said Premier Stalin, in a letter to Reuters Harold King: "Dissolution of the Communist International . . . exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that 'Moscow' allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and to 'bolshevize' them. . . It facilitates . . future organization of the companionship of nations based upon their equality."

Said Foreign Minister Molotov, at a luncheon celebrating the first anniversary of the Anglo-Russian Twenty-Year pact: The treaty will endure "not only during the war for war purposes, but during the peace for peace purposes."

Commented Joe Davies on this remark: "We agreed in the Kremlin that this is one of the most momentous statements of all time."

Cornerstones & Temples. London and Washington knew that the road ahead would not be without obstacles: clinching of the military victory in Europe and in Asia, postwar boundaries, reparations, economic reconstruction. But the feeling was firm that a proper foundation had been laid, that future power politics might be enlightened power politics.

Said the Manchester Guardian: "It is generally recognized today that the [Anglo-Russian] treaty of May 26, 1942, is one of the cornerstones upon which may rest, not only the future collaboration of two great powers, but the whole vast edifice of postwar reconstruction."

In the columned State Department Building friends of Under Secretary Sumner Welles found him practically wreathed in smiles.

* No smiler, according to the New York Times, was the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Admiral William Standley. He was described as so piqued over the Davies display that he was determined to resign. Commented the Admiral: "I have nothing to say."

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