"Greatest Democracy"

Eddie Rickenbacker liked Russia. He liked the passionate conviction of ultimate victory, the keen and capable Red pilots, the fertile look of tilled fields spread out below and the way the Russians deal with absenteeism in factories.

Rickenbacker's wartime speeches have been anti-labor and anti-Red; back last week from a three-month, 55,000-mile air tour of world battlefronts, he said that:

> The Russian war effort "is the greatest all-out effort in the world."

> Bolshevism "is not what we have been led to believe by ... enthusiasts."

> The Russians "have been consistently turning right, in the right direction."

> Russia is likely to "come out of this war the greatest democracy in the world."

> "If we keep going the way we are, we'll be where they were 25 years ago."

> In Russia there are no "unessential industries," no "labor difficulties," the 66-hour week is compulsory. Tardy employees are reprimanded, chronically late workers have their wages and rations cut, flagrant offenders are sent to the bread lines.

> At 18, boys leave their factory jobs for the Army, regardless of special skills.

> In the Army there is respect for rank; officers' uniforms copy Czarist designs.

> Stalin is opposed to world revolution and was sincere in his dissolution of the Comintern.

Finding the Russians "frank and sincere" in answering his questions, Rickenbacker concluded that "we will need them and they will need us to preserve world peace and eliminate the possibility of a third world war in 25 years."

Like any convert, Eddie Rickenbacker recommends the treatment for others. "Let our great leaders, including our President and Mr. Churchill, visit Russia and Mr. Stalin [whom Churchill, but not Rickenbacker, has met], . . . We should not be too captious if Stalin has not seen fit to attend the conferences. ... He has little time for anything but immediate results."

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