The Snickerers

In the red and gold theater of Paris' Palais de Chaillot, Russia laughed a laugh that was heard around the world.

"I could hardly sleep all last night," Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky told the U.N. General Assembly. "I could not sleep because I kept laughing." He bent his white-thatched terrier's head over a typed manuscript, then looked up with a sharp-toothed grin. "Really, even from this rostrum ... I cannot restrain my laughter." There were a few appreciative giggles from Reds in the galleries, but otherwise Vishinsky laughed alone as he gave Russia's answer to the West's dis armament proposals (see NATIONAL AF FAIRS).

The Word Unspoken. The Western plan was presented to the 60 nations of the U.N. with flourishes -- in a formal American-British-French resolution, in a speech by President Truman from Wash ington, and finally in a cool, point-by-point Assembly address by U.S. Secretary of State Acheson.

"The Soviet Union has talked a great deal about peace, but when it comes to achieving peace through deeds . . . they obstruct," said Acheson. "They call for a new five-power pact but refuse to carry out our 60-power peace pact, the U.N.

Charter." If Russia really wants peace, said Acheson, she had only to say the word, and "the fighting could end in Korea . . . But has it been spoken?" The Dead Mouse. Bounding to the stand about three hours after Dean Acheson had spoken, Vishinsky carried a made-in-Moscow speech into which he had scratched hasty insertions to rebut the U.S.

It was not quite the same old Vishinsky, the corrosive purveyor of wise saws and ancient instances-- he was slower and less certain of himself, and his wit was chillier. But it was the same old Soviet line, with a few new twists to adjust to the passage of a year. For disarmament, Vishinsky wanted a world disarmament conference, to sit by next June; for Korea, he insisted on a truce at the 38th parallel and an evacuation of all foreign troops; for the benefit of Communism, he wanted the U.N. to condemn and outlaw the West's North Atlantic defense organization; for the record, he wanted it understood that the same old Wall Street imperialists and Washington warmongers were responsible for the world's ills. As for the West's plan: "The mountain . . . gave birth to a mouse ... a dead mouse."

The Corridor Echo. The West's response was quick and cold. "The most impressive point, as far as I am concerned," said Dean Acheson, "is Mr. Vishinsky's statement that facts are stubborn things, because he wrestled with facts for two hours and lost."

But in all the clamor, the noise > that hurt Russia most came from Andrei Vishinsky himself. "His laugh," wrote the New York Times's Anne O'Hare McCormick, "may have done more to undermine Russian peace propaganda than a whole battery of counterpropaganda . . . For nothing he said or will say to the assembled nations is so revealing and reverberating as that laugh. It goes echoing through the corridors of the U.N. . . . like the snicker of an evil spirit. Perhaps it will echo down the corridors of time. Lesser things than a laugh at the hopes and fears of humanity have brought down empires and dethroned tyrants."

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