Parties

Cheerful, suave, U. S. Ambassador William Christian Bullitt is too good a diplomat to say that he thinks the way to deal with Russians is to treat them like grown-up children. But in Moscow last week he gave what amounted to a children's "animal party" for grown-up Bolshevik statesmen.

The entire ground floor of the new U. S. Embassy was decorated for its first grand ball as a combination barnyard and zoo. Moscow's two best jazz orchestras blared near a frisky goat, four droop-eyed sheep, a cageful of songbirds and roosters. Two bear cubs, borrowed by Ambassador Bullitt from the Moscow Public Zoo, spent most of the evening in each other's arms. Revelers in white ties included Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff, Education Commissar Bubnov, Foreign Trade Commissar Rosengolt. Only the most old-fashioned Belshevik guests such as Publicists Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek, came dressed in proletarian sack suits. Tossing off the Ambassador's champagne, they sported all night with the excuse of waiting for his cocks to crow at dawn.

Humbler Moscow folks had a party too last week. The first seven miles of the first subway in Russia opened for business with three days of free rides for the Tovarishchi who helped build it. Driven through quicksand and swampy ground in two years of furious if ill-directed digging, largely by volunteer workmen, there are many things about Moscow's new subway to cause serious engineers to shake their heads, but it easily lives up to its motto: "The most beautiful subway in the world." Built, in the words of Transport Commissar Kaganovich, "to show people what the future will be like under Socialism." all the stations are panelled in rare marble, decorated with huge murals in fresco and mosaic, lit by solid bronze fixtures. The gleaming red-&-buff cars are staffed by attendants in red-&-blue uniforms.

Comrade Stalin, who took his first ride on the third day of the free "dress rehearsals," was most interested in the escalators installed in two of the stations. He had never seen one before, rode up & down twice. The moving staircases terrified most Communists. Militiamen were told off to hold nervous women by the hand.

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