Solidarity Forever

A beautiful example of how to kid the censors was given by the New York Time's erudite Brooks Atkinson, who tucked his tongue in his cheek, pecked out a deadpan cable from Moscow:

"Amid rejoicings in the Moscow press over the virtues and glorious achievements of the Soviet Union, a foreigner on a gloomy Sunday morning cannot help contemplating with a heavy heart the imperfections and errors of the U.S. As evidence of the happy unanimity of electors in the U.S.S.R., the newspaper Pravda today points out that in the last U.S. presidential election only 48,000,000 of 60,000,000 persons qualified to vote exercised the franchise [and] 25,600,000 voted for the party in power.

"Last Sunday, according to official U.S.S.R. figures, 99.7% of the people qualified to vote in the U.S.S.R. actually did vote. And 99.18% of them voted for the Communist and nonparty bloc that is in power. Speculating on the reception abroad of the news . . . Pravda continues: 'It is not difficult to guess that the results . . . came as an extremely unpleasant surprise to those who had hoped for a weakening of the solidarity of the Soviet people and those who do not relish Soviet democracy. . . .'"

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