Samovar to Tula

A thousand international "partisans of peace" descended on Moscow's Dom Soyuzov (House of Trade Unions) last week. Before a red plush backdrop bearing giant portraits of Lenin and Stalin, they acted out a Kremlin command performance of a familiar comedy.

The same old cast was on hand. Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Red Dean of Canterbury, proudly fondled the immense gold cross dangling on his chest--a cherished gift from the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei. "To talk of peace in the Soviet Union," said the Dean sanctimoniously, "is like bringing one's samovar to Tula."* Italy's table-thumping left-wing Socialist Leader Pietro Nenni furiously denounced the Atlantic pact as an instrument of war, shouted that President Truman was "a pocket-sized Napoleon . . ." The U.S. was represented by party-lining Negro educator Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, Germany by America's erstwhile No. 1 Communist Gerhart Eisler. When one of the delegates blurted out "Long live Stalin!", foreign guests and their Soviet friends applauded loud and long.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson noted that the Moscow Peace Conference seemed out of tune with Russia's warlike threats against Yugoslavia (see above). "Of course, they will try to make out that this saber rattling is really the cooing of the dove," he explained, "but the dove seems to have a somewhat sore throat."

*Rough equivalent of "carrying coals to Newcastle." A metalworking town 120 miles south of Moscow, Tula is famous for its samovar industry.

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