The Loaded-Answer Man

THE NATION The Loaded-Answer Man

Five times since the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin had deigned to answer written questions from U.S. and British correspondents. The questions and the timing were strictly of his choosing, and the answers were always loaded to show that Old Joe was a man of peace -- especially when the West was at a crucial stage in building its own counter-strength.

In September 1946, for example, Joe was at his pious best. Asked Correspondent Alexander Werth of the London Sunday Times: "Do you believe that the quickest withdrawal of all American forces in Chi na is vitally necessary for the future of peace?" Replied Stalin (whose Commu nist armies completed their conquest of China three years later) : "Yes, I do." At some dark hour of last week, while the Western world was getting ready for its Christmas, Joe reached into his hopper for the newest question list from the U.S.

James ("Scotty") Reston, the New York Times's diplomatic correspondent, had written out four polite questions in mid-December, had shown them to his Wash ington bureau chief, Pundit Arthur Krock, and then sent them around to the Soviet embassy with a covering letter. Reston had tried this system before with no luck, so he had no qualms about going off to Florida for a Christmas vacation. On Christmas Eve, his office tracked him down in St. Petersburg to relay a message: call the Russian embassy. Reston did, and the Christmas morning Times, in five-column headlines, accompanied by a benign photograph of Stalin, obligingly served up Old Joe's newest call to peace on earth.

Action & Reaction. The answers were obviously drawn in the hope of dulling the sense of vigor and challenge which followed Ike Eisenhower's election and his trip to Korea. Said Stalin: 1) war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. "cannot be regarded as inevitable," and the two countries can, in the future, live at peace with each other; 2) the sources of world contention lie in "the aggressive activities of the policy of the cold war conducted against the Soviet Union"; 3) he holds "a favorable view" of diplomatic conversations aimed toward a Stalin-Eisenhower personal meeting; 4) he is willing to cooperate on a new diplomatic approach to Korea "because the U.S.S.R. is interested in the liquidation of the Korean war."

The Times's correspondents throughout the world sent the story echoing back with "reaction" stories from "informed sources." (General reaction: extreme skepticism.) Reporters tried in vain to badger a comment out of General Eisenhower as he was about to go into Columbia University's St. Paul's Chapel on Christmas morning. In Washington next day, Harry Truman was besieged all day by queries, finally said that he would be "pleased indeed if any agreement can be reached with Stalin which would achieve world peace." Ike's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, after conferring by telephone with Eisenhower, said that any "concrete proposals" by Stalin "will be seriously and sympathetically received." But as far as an Eisenhower-Stalin meeting was concerned, Dulles simply said: "Diplomatic or United Nations channels of communication are always available."

The Word from Moscow. There was very little more worth saying, but the good grey Times, in its own lofty brand of sensationalism, all but shook itself apart in keeping the story alive. Its Moscow Correspondent Harrison Salisbury quoted unnamed "diplomatic observers" to imply that the U.S., after all, is responsible for the cold war. Perhaps Sta lin has in mind "putting his nation in the role of an actual mediator in the Korean negotiations," speculated Salisbury. Then he added: "It might work out better than some in the West would suppose. The Russians are very serious about such obligations . . ."

In counterpoint, the Times's homegrown Russian experts wrote that Russia has not abated her "Hate America" cam paign one jot. The net effect, however, was to give Stalin's answers a sense of importance far beyond their value.

The Times walked, eyes open, into a trap, well described last Oct. 4 by the In-national Press Institute, founded by the Times's Sunday Editor Lester Markel.

Warned the institute: "News about Russia is different both in degree and in kind from other news traditionally received by an editor. And an interview with Stalin or a Stalin answer to a cabled query from the outside world is subject to none of the conditions normally surrounding the gathering of news. Is Stalin to have the leading pages of the world's newspapers opened to him just because the Russian view of the press makes it impossible for Stalin and Russia to be covered like other important topics with which the press is concerned?"

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