The Sightseers

The Iron Curtain was raised dramatically last week to admit eight of Britain's top Socialists, who stepped through happy in the conviction that their hosts would really show them something worth seeing, convinced that they themselves could not be fooled, and appalled that anyone might think that the Communists could make fine propaganda use of them.

In this complacent state, they put down first at Moscow en route to Peking. Heading the pack was former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, accompanied by Nye Bevan, Labor Party Secretary Morgan Phillips, Labor Chairman Wilfred Burke, onetime Minister of National Insurance Edith Summerskill and Trade Union Leaders Harry Earnshaw, Sam Watson and Harry Franklin. Moscow's richest and reddest carpets were rolled out. A flecon of Russia's finest perfume, "The Spirit of the Red Army," was waiting in her hotel room to greet Dr. Summerskill, the only woman in the party. Soviet Premier Georgy Malenkov even went so far as to drive over to the British embassy and drink a toast to Queen Elizabeth.

Hot Bricks. Conscientious Clement Attlee had been frank to admit beforehand that on such a tour "you are often shown only what your hosts want you to see." It was Attlee's hope nonetheless that a look at the cloistered rulers of Communism, who have never seen or been seen by top Westerners, might prove instructive in many ways, provided one could distinguish "eyewash" from cruder reality. Not all Britons were convinced of Clem's ability to make the distinction. A Liberal Party spokesman warned Attlee & Co. that they were treading "on very hot bricks." London's Economist scolded the former Prime Minister sharply for "serving the purposes of a [hostile | propaganda machine" (see box), and Attlee's own onetime Minister of State, Hector McNeil, denounced the junket as both "highly irresponsible and ill-timed."

Such waspish suspicions were thrust aside in the sudden Gemiitlichkeit of Moscow's reception. On the first night in town, the visitors were shipped out to a spacious dacha once occupied by Maxim Gorky, to be wined and dined by the Kremlin's biggest wigs. Clad in gleaming white, Premier Malenkov himself strode to the garden to pick a bouquet of purple phlox and red gladioli for Dr. Edith. Some time later he soothed her feminist ardor with the assurance that women in the field of education were "too often overmodest." So many happy vodka toasts were drunk that night that even teetotaling Harry Earnshaw lost count over endless glasses of lemonade.

Differing Freedoms. Next night Malenkov and his henchmen took dinner with the foreigners at the British embassy, the first time such a thing has happened since Stalin dined with Churchill in wartime 1944. The cordial chitchat between the great men of both nations continued far into the night. "There were no sharp questions asked and no sharp remarks made," said one of the Britons after a five-hourlong heart-to-heart talk with the Russians. At one point in the evening, Attlee, Deputy Foreign Minister Vishinsky and Trade Minister Mikoyan explored the meaning of the word freedom. At last, through a bewildered interpreter, the three agreed that in the West it meant "freedom to choose"; in the Communist East it meant freedom "from having to choose."

Next day Dr. Summerskill poked through Moscow's maternity hospital and the new GUM department store, which she found "absolutely terrific." At Moscow's towering new university building, Nye Bevan asked the Russian provost if Communism was a compulsory course. It was. "Suppose," persisted Nye, "that I did not want to take Communism?" The provost smiled broadly. "You would take it anyway," he said.

At the end of two days of tours, tea parties, toasts and sights (which included the inside of the Kremlin and the tomb of Lenin and Stalin), the touring Laborites were ready to take off for their final destination: Red China. Of Moscow's Malenkov, Clement Attlee remarked with Orwellian crypticism: "He is the most equal of the equals." Nye Bevan was warmer in praise. The Soviet Premier, he said, was "a man with a warm sense of humor."

Some 40 hours later, after a brief stop in Outer Mongolia, the touring Britons arrived in Peking, to be welcomed by Premier Chou En-lai at a cocktail party for 400. At a lunch given by Chou next day, they happily munched on roots of the lotus flower. Perhaps they found time later to recall the Moscow memory of what New York Times Correspondent Harrison E. Salisbury cryptically described as "a mildly admonitory toast offered [late] in the proceedings by possibly the most senior Russian present."

This most senior Russian wished for better British-Chinese relations, but hoped no one had the idea of improving British-Chinese relations at the expense of Soviet-Chinese relations.

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