Stalin's Week

THE NATIONS

No week passes without Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin's firm influence being felt somewhere in the world; but his public interventions are few. Last week was a notable exception; it produced Stalin's first three published policy statements since October.

British Foreign Secretary Bevin* wrote straight to headquarters to ask why Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, had interpreted a stray sentence of his to mean that Britain had ditched her Russian alliance. Replied Stalin: "It is now clear that you and I share the same viewpoint with regard to the Anglo-Soviet treaty." To Bevin's reiterated offer to extend the alliance from 20 to 50 years, Stalin answered: "Before extending this treaty, it is necessary to change it." Bevin will discuss possible changes with Stalin when he visits Moscow in March.

In another fretful area of big-power relations, Tass reported that during his recent Kremlin conversations, Field Marshal Montgomery proposed an Anglo-Russian exchange of officers similar to that between the U.S. and Britain. Stalin said this was "desirable" but at present "not quite appropriate."

Most piquant quote of the three statements came in an interview Elliott Roosevelt got with Stalin in December, which

Look printed last week. When Elliott sought to ensure his interview's value by protecting it from prior publication, Stalin said, with an irony even capitalists could savor: "This is your property. Nobody else will get it."

* Bevin had another alarming heart attack last week, once more bounced back from it with remarkable resilience.

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