The Warmongers

Andrei Vishinsky likes to tell the world that U.S. capitalists are warmongers. A large contingent of clerks in Moscow is kept busy plowing through U.S. publications to supply Vishinsky and other Soviet statesmen with evidence in support of that charge. The other day, Vishinsky fell for his own propaganda.

In his violent anti-U.S. speech at U.N.'s General Assembly (TIME, Oct. 4), Vishinsky cited a certain map as evidence that U.S. capitalism is plotting war. Said Vishinsky: "The map published by the Esso Company of New York is of ... insolently arrogant and war-inciting nature ... It is called, quite provocatively, The Map of the Third World War.' That is what they are publishing in the U.S. . . . They are handing them out to motorists. This map, with provocatively militant appeals, carries the heading: 'Pacific Theater of Military Operations.' The map is an example of malicious war propaganda against the Soviet Union and the new democracies of Eastern Europe . . ."

The story was promptly picked up by

Europe's leftist press--and by many other papers. U.S. newsmen in Paris became curious. A quick check showed that some overeager beaver in Moscow had committed a prize boner. The map in question was entitled: "War Map III, featuring the Pacific Theater." It covered Japan, Korea, China and Southeast Asia. It was published in December 1944, as an ad for Esso; it was the third in a series designed to help the U.S. public follow the progress of World War II (earlier maps had covered the European and African theaters).

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