Let's Talk

Many Americans believe that if they could only talk to those Russians, everything would be all right. Last week, the U.S. State Department tried it.

In a nightly one-hour short-wave broadcast, ambitiously titled the "voice of the United States of America," a staff of 15 Russian-speaking Americans would henceforth give Russia what Secretary of State Marshall called the "pure and unadulterated" truth. In the first broadcast last week (9 p.m. Moscow time), the Voice of America included 20 minutes of straight news. Then followed a twelve-minute lecture on the U.S. form of government, which said, among other things, that the U.S. had lost its fear of the "socalled despotism of the central government."

Next came an interlude of cowboy tunes, including The Old Chisholm Trail ("Coma ti yi youpy, yappy yay, yappy yay, Coma ti yi youpy yappy yay," which probably sounded like static to Russian ears), a talk on a new cure for hay fever (the U.S. has 5,000,000 sufferers), and a new method of exploring the Milky Way. When the closing theme, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, went out over the air, Soviet Russia was still at least as distant as the Milky Way. Just as the Voice of America signed off, the Voice of Russia (Moscow Radio's foreign service) went on the air with a denunciation of "U.S. imperialists" who were seeking to "dominate the entire world."

And how did the Russians like America's Voice? Reported New York's World-Telegram in a memorable headline: RUSSIANS RESTRAIN JOY OVER U.S. BROADCAST. Listeners who were interviewed said that they liked the music, found that the text did "not sound American." But the Voice of America (which has a long way to travel via an insufficient relay station in Munich) was completely inaudible on all but the very best Russian radio sets, which are owned by the very best Communists.

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