Brass v. Steel

"Why shouldn't I interview Stalin?" the rich and dapper little son of an Ohio railway conductor asked himself recently in Paris. Stalin is the son of a blacksmith. In Paris the conductor's son grabbed a telephone, called Moscow, asked the U. S. Embassy if the blacksmith's son would consent to see him, took a train for Moscow.

At friendly William Christian Bullitt's lavish U. S. Embassy, good news awaited Roy Wilson Howard, orchidaceous board chairman of Scripps-Howard Newspapers. Stalin would see Publisher Howard on Sunday and Stalin did, to the sour vexation of Moscow's regular correspondents. Cabled the Herald Tribune's Joseph B. Phillips: "[The] interview which Joseph V. Stalin gave to Roy W. Howard ... on Sunday . . . has just been whipped into shape for release by the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs [on Wednesday].''

Nevertheless last week's scoop by Chairman Howard was of the first magnitude. After his even more difficult feat three years ago in becoming the first journalist received by the Japanese Emperor since the accession of His Majesty, Roy Howard had to give his word not to quote one word of what the Son-of-Heaven said (TIME, July 3, 1933). Last week the Soviet Government not only permitted quotes but supplied Mr. Howard with a translation of what Joseph Stalin had said in Russian, this interview having been conducted through brilliant, saturnine Constantine Umansky as interpreter. For five years Comrade Umansky was the Soviet Foreign Office's Chief Censor of all news going out of Russia. He leaves Russia this week to become counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

An ace newsman must have the brass to ask what are generally called "embarrassing questions." This quality Mr. Howard displayed in full measure in his interview with Dictator Stalin, whom it is virtually impossible to embarrass. Consequently their conversation, even after filtering through the Chief Soviet Censor, was a merry din of brass clashing upon steel.*

Russia Without Communism. "Admittedly Communism has not been achieved in Russia!" cried Brass. "State Socialism has. Have not Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed to have attained similar results? Have not both been achieved at the price of deprivation of personal liberty, sacrificed for the good of the State?"

Replied Steel, wholly unembarrassed: "No, Communism has not been achieved in the Soviet Union so far. It is not easy. But your term 'State Socialism' is not exact. Many people refer to a condition as State Socialism when a considerable amount of national wealth passes to government ownership, sometimes for military advantage, even though the majority of wealth remains in private hands.

"The social order which we have built up so far cannot be termed State Socialism in this sense. The Soviet system is fundamentally Socialistic because there is no private ownership of factories, land, banks, railways, mines, etc. Our system -- which not yet has been quite completed --is Socialistic because the foundation of society is common State ownership, ownership by the people or ownership by cooperatives and collective farms.

"Italian Fascism or German National Socialism does not have anything in com mon with such a system, because in those countries private ownership of industry is not affected. Capitalism in those countries still has full effectiveness.

"Under Socialism a certain inequality concerning property remains, but there is no more unemployment, exploitation or oppression of one nationality by another [in Russia]. Everybody is obliged to work and is compensated not according to his needs but according to the quantity and quality of the work.

"That is why wages have not been equalized. Only that society can be called Communistic in which people are compensated, not on the basis of the quantity or quality of the work produced, but on the basis of their needs."

Stalin on War. The unembarrassed admission by the No. 1 Communist of the World that Russia is far from being Communist but is instead a land where pay is on a strictly piecework basis was perhaps the most significant part of Roy Howard's interview. On other points however Brass and Steel clashed far more spectacularly. Brass: Would a Japanese attempt to seize the capital of Outer Mongolia make positive action (i.e., war) by the Soviet Union necessary?

Steel: Yes.

Brass: Seemingly the entire world today is predicting another great war. If it proves inevitable, when, Mr. Stalin, do you think it will come?

Steel: It may come very unexpectedly. Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply start. However, I feel that the position of the friends of peace is improving. They have the advantage of being able to work in the open by such instruments as the League of Nations with the assistance of powerful public opinion. They have tremendous support in the objection to war shared by the masses of all nations. There is today no people wanting war.

On the other hand, the proponents of war must work in the dark, to their disadvantage. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that this very fact may tempt them to an act of desperation. One of the newest successes of the friends of peace is ratification of the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact by the French Chamber (TIME, March 9). This pact is a certain obstacle to the enemies of peace.

Brass: Should war come, Mr. Stalin, where is it most likely to break out? Where are the war clouds more menacing, in the East or in the West?

Steel: For the moment, perhaps, the situation in the Far East is more menacing, but the centre of danger may shift to Europe. Evidence of this was Herr Hitler's recent interview in a Paris paper in which his statement, though pacific in terminology, carried with it threats against both France and the Soviet Union. It is symptomatic that even when Hitler speaks peace he cannot dispense with threats.

Brass: What situation or condition in your opinion, Mr. Stalin, furnishes the chief war menace today?

Steel: Capitalism.

Broken Pledges. This pungent answer by the Dictator provoked nimble little Capitalist Howard to a veritable war dance of questions to which Communist Stalin replied in kind. Object of each was to get the better of the other, and in the version made official by Censor Umansky it appeared that Stalin won.

Mr. Howard confronted the Dictator with the fact that Soviet Russia has violated and continues to violate the solemn promises of Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (TIME, Nov. 27-1933) Soviet wits have accurately said that the Daughters of the American Revolution probably could not be permitted to meet in Moscow if the Litvinoff engagements were fulfilled to the letter by the Soviet Government. Mr. Howard's point was that they are not fulfilled. Comrade Stalin's rebuttal was by implication that it would be absurd for the Soviet Union to do what it solemnly promised the U. S. it would do in order to get President Roosevelt to recognize Russia.

When Brass clashed out last week with reminders of the incontestable violations committed in the presence of Stalin himself when overthrow of U. S. Capitalist institutions was urged in Moscow by U. S. Communists Browder and Darcy (TIME, Aug. 12), the reply of Steel was for once just a bit embarrassed and evasive.

"I don't recall what Browder and Darcy said," hedged Joseph Stalin. "Maybe they said something of that nature--but the Soviet people did not found the American Communist Party. The American Communist Party was created by Americans." By this weasel, Steel could be said to have won the match from Brass, but it was soon evident that, for all Censor Umansky's care, Publisher Howard had got deeply under Soviet skins.

Nobody knows better than Comrade Litvinoff that the Litvinoff-to-Roosevelt pledges were nothing but a trap to catch recognition and that, recognition having been caught, they became scraps of paper. When the U. S. Congress ascertained the facts, it refused to appropriate the necessary $1,100,000 for U. S. Embassy & Consular buildings in the Soviet Union. Today Ambassador Bullitt, highly persona grata in Moscow, constitutes almost the sole friendly link between Moscow and Washington. Last week Comrade Litvinoff, obviously more worried than he cared to admit by the attention Mr. Howard had called to the Soviet-U. S. situation, bleated in Moscow: "The question of Communist propaganda is a stale subject about which there should be no further discussion."

* Stalin is the Russian word for steel.

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