New Face in Moscow?

After three years of military diplomacy as Ike Eisenhower's brilliant wartime chief of staff, Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith switched smoothly to the civilian brand in 1946 as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. There, for almost three years, he has nursed his ulcers and plugged determinedly away at the nation's toughest, loneliest diplomatic post. But in the stiffening deadlock of U.S.-Soviet relations there has been little that any diplomat could do other than make futile trips to the Kremlin.

When he flew home last fall to give Harry Truman a dramatic up-to-the-minute briefing on his campaign train, it was no secret that "Beedle" Smith was thinking seriously of getting out. At the time, most observers expected that a new President would make it easy for him to do so in January.

Last week it looked as though there would be a new face in Moscow even though Harry Truman stayed in the White House. Leaving ugly, gloomy Spasso House for a vacation in the U.S., Beedle Smith admitted only: "I have handed in my resignation according to form. What the New Year will bring I don't know." Newsmen who watched him pack up all of his personal belongings before he left guessed that he was not planning to come back to Russia.

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