This week TIME'S John Scott starts on tour as one of our speakers at U.S. colleges and journalism schools. His subjects: the defense of Europe, the emergence of European unity, and the impact of the U.S. on European affairs.

Scott, who has spent almost half his life working close to (and on both sides of) the Iron Curtain, took a refresher look overseas this summer, when he spent nine weeks talking on Soviet and U.S. foreign policy to U.S. troops in Europe and North Africa. On the trip, he gave 46 talks to a total audience of almost 12,000 officers, enlisted men and, in a few instances, civilians. He was invited to make the tour by the Defense Department, after he had spoken before several military groups in the U.S. last year. TIME agreed to pay his expenses, but Scott was at the disposal of the Defense Department.

Two of Scott's talks during the summer were delivered in German. Once, he started by speaking in English before a meeting of local dignitaries--including the mayor--of the town of Regensburg. When he discovered that many members of his audience hadn't understood a word, he repeated the talk in German. Another talk was given in Russian, to a group of Russian refugees for whom a radio station is being set up in Munich to beam its broadcasts to the peoples of Russia. At the time Scott spoke, the project was stalemated because of differences among the refugees themselves. One hassle was over names. The rightist refugees were against using the word "Soviet," because they felt the Soviet government had no legal existence; the national minorities, such as the Tur-kestani, were opposed to using the word "Russia." Scott urged them to compose their differences and to concentrate on the more important objective of liberating people from Soviet tyranny. The station has now been christened "Radio Liberation," and will go on the air in a few weeks.

In his talks to military personnel, and especially in the question periods which followed, Scott found widespread and intelligent interest in international problems. Some of their questions : What is the significance of the troubles of Madame Ana Pauker? How do you evaluate the work of the Voice of America? Can we hope for a split in Russia between the military and political leaders? Why does the U.S. continue to spend money abroad? Are people behind the Iron Curtain mature enough to select their own governments if liberated? Is the Schuman Plan an effective means to counteract Soviet aggression in Europe? Why do we not let the Russians have Berlin?

To answer these and other questions, Scott had to call on his own experiences during a decade he spent in Russia. Asked, for instance, what effect the arming of Western Germany would have on Soviet foreign policy, he said: "I don't think it has any. The Soviet government takes it for granted that their enemies are doing everything possible against them anyway. They take it for granted that we've been building a West German army against them since 1945. When the West German troops are actually under arms, it will make no difference whatsoever in Soviet foreign policy. Short of an attack on the Soviet Union, I don't think we could provoke a war. They'll attack us when they think they can win, not sooner or later."

Scott himself has a rare background for talking about Russia, Communist scheming and Soviet thinking. In 1932, he decided to leave the University of Wisconsin and to learn something about the Soviet experiment by going prepared himself by taking a welder's course in the U.S., then worked as a welder and chemist at the Siberian industrial center of Magnitogorsk, married a Russian girl there. Then he spent several years in Moscow as a correspondent for the London News Chronicle and the French news agency Havas. In 1941 he wrote a series of articles about the growing friction between Hitler and Stalin, was summarily thrown out of the Soviet Union. Two weeks later the Nazis invaded Russia.

Back in the U.S. in 1942, Scott wrote two books in quick succession, Behind the Urals and Duel for Europe. Later he became TIME'S wartime correspondent in Stockholm, and first postwar chief of the Berlin Bureau. He has also written a third book, Europe In Revolution, and is currently working on a book on political warfare.

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.