RUSSIA: Greetings to Joe

Adolf Hitler’s Reichstag speech (see p. 21) was not transmitted over Russian stations. The German radio announced that the speech had been translated into and rebroadcast in every conceivable language—except Russian. The Russian radio failed even to mention the speech. All this in spite of Herr Hitler’s confident statement on Russo-German relations: “A veritable Wandering Jew among [British] hopes is the belief in the possibility of a fresh estrangement between Germany and Russia.” Working like a beaver on those hopes in Moscow last week was Britain’s new Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps. All previous British attempts to win hyper sensitive, suspicious Joseph Stalin have failed, partly because of an accumulation of minor British psychological blunders, which Sir Stafford has been doing his best to avoid.

Last week one faux pas was made and another was narrowly averted. The blun der: BBC, despite instructions for strict secrecy, announced that on July 1 Sir Stafford had had a three-hour talk with Joseph Stalin. The narrow escape: Be cause the mails are impossibly slow, Sir Stafford corresponds by cable with his wife in London. Recently he told her he had bought an Airedale named Joe. Last week, Lady Cripps told friends, she wrote a cable to her husband, ended it with “Greetings to Joe,” saw her blunder, struck out the last word, substituted “Airedale.”