There'll Be Some Changes Made

On the wall hung a picture of Stalin. With passionate feeling and extravagant gesture a schoolboy declaimed an epic poem in praise of Tovarish Stalin. This happened in Washington, D.C.

In this schoolroom in a converted rooming house in the capital, Stalin's praises were still being sung last week--but not for long. The Kremlin had ordered the Soviet School closed, and the 45 schoolkids (children of Russian diplomats and clerks) returned to Russia. In New York and London, other Soviet youngsters had also received their marching orders. By keeping them in separate schools, the Soviet government had tried to insulate their innocents abroad from corrupt and corrupting Western ideas. Apparently Moscow now thought that the only place they would really be safe from capitalist contamination was back home.

In Boston last week, Ginn & Co., largest publisher of schoolbooks in the U.S., rushed a revision of its bestselling World Geography by Geologist John Hodgdon Bradley. Texas, which would use 10,000 copies of the book, had objected to some of the nice things Bradley (an exmarine) had to say about Russia, when he wrote the book in 1945. The new World Geography for Texas, with the author's consent, would call Russia the "biggest" instead of the "greatest" nation in Europe, reduce the Soviet government's achievements from "mighty" to "considerable," downgrade Russia's claim to warm-water Baltic ports from "desperately" to "very much needed."

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