Nyet

The high hills of Montana lie covered by one of the biggest snowfalls within memory. With a warming February wind, melted snows began swelling Montana's Madison River east of Butte. Soon the rising waters breached a dike, flooding low-lying farm land and forcing nine families in Three Forks to evacuate their homes.

The locals cannot afford to fix the dike, and so far they have been unable to get state or federal aid. Finally, in exasperation at bureaucracy, Jack Zuelke, the owner of a Three Forks inn with six feet of water in its basement, dispatched a telegram to the Soviet embassy in Washington: "The people of the Three Forks area, having been ignored by all state and federal agencies, do hereby appeal to the people and government of the U.S.S.R. for foreign aid to alleviate present flood conditions."

The bemused counselor of the Soviet embassy, Viktor Isakov, appeared at the office of Montana Senator Mike Mansfield. "We are puzzled by this request," he said. "Could you please explain?" Mansfield's staff declared that nothing could be done until the citizens asked for a new dam and raised their property taxes to provide flood control. After hearing Isakov's report, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin decided against intervention.

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