Won't You Come In?

A hot propaganda potato had been tossed to Secretary of State Acheson; it was either keep it and get burned, or toss it back. He cupped it gingerly in his hands, and heaved it back. Twenty-two Soviet bloc citizens, including top Russian Composer Dmitri Shostakovich, had applied to visit the U.S. They would be chief exhibits at a "cultural and scientific conference for world peace" this week in Manhattan.

The Secretary of State could keep the Communists out, as the Communists had kept the Americans out of Russian territory. Or he could let them in, label them well and let them talk their heads off. He issued the visas--and a frosty statement that the U.S. "entertains no illusions as to the manner in which the Communists will attempt to use and manipulate the present conference."

Apparently a few Americans still entertained some illusions. The U.S. sponsoring committee was studded with the well-intentioned, the gullible, the confused, and salted with Communists. The committee was headed by Harvard Astronomer Harlow Shapley, who has long had red stars in his eyes. Besides such unsurprising names as Henry A. Wallace and Charles Chaplin, the roster included Physicist Albert Einstein, Novelist Thomas Mann. What was really surprising at this late date was that such supposedly well-informed people as Vassar President Sarah Gibson Blanding and Columbia Philosopher Irwin Edman had agreed to sponsor the Communists' show and ducked out only at the last minute.

Whatever the Communist visitors had to say, the State Department intended to use their presence here as ammunition for the daily Voice of America broadcasts to Eastern Europe. In the case of Shostakovich, a few dreamers hoped for more sensational results: the New York musicians' union invited the submissive Soviet composer, who works hard to keep in tune with his masters, to unpack and let "his genius flower ... in the blessed air of freedom." No one could guess how Shostakovich really felt about the idea. By all the evidences he and the artistic high command in the Kremlin were singing in the same key again. Shostakovich had been allowed to leave the country and while he is away Moscow moviegoers are enjoying his latest score, a travesty on Yankee Doodle. Presumably the Kremlin had also taken the customary steps to persuade Shostakovich and his six junketeers that it would be best to come right home.

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