Candid Capitalist

In recent dispatches rueful Moscow correspondents have been cabling that, while it may "sound funny" in the U. S. for the newly appointed U. S. Ambassador to Russia, genial and wealthy Lawyer Joseph Edward Davies, to be sending along some 2,000 pints of cream and other quick-frozen foods such as strawberries (TIME, Dec. 28), it is "no joke" in Moscow where there is often no cream at any price. The Ambassadorial strawberries et al.

rolled into Moscow last week. Interior decorators from Manhattan had just finished doing over the Spasso palace, (built in Tsarist times by a Russian mercantile mogul), to suit Mrs. Marjorie Post Close Hutton Davies. In swept the Davieses' corps of six servants from Manhattan, headed by an authoritative butler who engaged seven Russian servants.

Most of these are agents of Dictator Stalin's secret police, an unavoidable feature of diplomatic life in the Soviet capital. Meanwhile in Berlin the Soviet Ambassador Jacques Suritz, a Jew who by special dispensation of Der Fuehrer is permitted to have Aryan housemaids (TIME, Nov. 25, 1935)> was throwing the biggest Red party of the year for Ambassador & Mrs. Davies and the Ambassador's 21-year-old daughter Emlen. The 50 pieces of Davies hand luggage and the 30 trunks were dispatched to the train by the Ambassador's two male secretaries (one a nephew, J. D.

Stamm) and Mrs. Davies' female secretary. This sort of candid Capitalism is, in a foreigner, the approach which commands the most respect from Bolsheviks in Russia today; they despise a Liberal or a Pink. At the Soviet frontier, where everyone must change trains, Ambassador Davies asked for a private car. Told that the Soviet has none, he cheerfully chartered a whole ordinary sleeping car.

Impressed, the customs officials bowed obsequiously when Ambassador Davies told them he had lost the Soviet permit enabling him to pass the frontier without having his luggage opened by Red customs guards. "That is quite unnecessary, Mr. Davies," beamed the Ogpu official, "in your case." Jouncing on for 15 hours to Moscow, Ambassador & Mrs. Davies were met by Soviet and U. S. Embassy officials in high hats and sleek great coats, shivering in 14-below-zero cold which would have made fur caps and untidy bearskins more comfortable. A dozen Red cameramen snapped the Davieses, and off they roared through streets cleared by Stalin's orders to their palace. It was evident that the Dictator, having badly muffed and antagonized the first Roosevelt Ambassador to Russia, famed "Bill" Bullitt,-was now doing everything possible to please the President's second envoy to Bolshevik-land. It was presently announced that Ambassador Davies, instead of wearing full evening dress when presenting his credentials to Puppet-President Michael Kalinin (as do other members of the Moscow diplomatic corps), would wear with New Deal unostentation "simple morning clothes--silk hat, striped trousers and swallow-tailed coat" as worn by Mr. Roosevelt at his Inaugural (see p. 9). Getting at once into the peculiar atmosphere of Moscow, which was at its most ominous last week, Ambassador Davies went daily to the Old Bolsheviks Trial (see below), followed the accusations, testimony and confessions with fascinated interest as they were translated to him by Embassy underlings in rapid whispers.

*Now U. S. Ambassador to France and originally hailed with Communist huzzahs because his onetime wife was the widow of Comrade John Reed (the much esteemed U. S.

Communist whose ashes lie buried by the Kremlin Wall with those of other Red heroes) and because Moscow thought he would turn out to be a Real Red, which he didn't.

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