National Affairs: Russia Will Hold Out

The pessimists who went to Moscow for Franklin Roosevelt last month returned last week as optimists. In the mission headed by slick, handsome William Averell Harriman were men of all types but of one stripe: all were eagle-eyed, fact-minded men; some of them were first-rate U.S. production experts. One & all had a preconceived picture of Soviet Russia as a sorry, ignorant, grubby wasteland. The mission reported to the President at Hyde Park at the end of a week in which catastrophes approached. Instead of coming as expected messengers of disaster, they arrived as heralds of hope. Their collective prediction: Moscow will not fall.

What would Stalin do? Long ago he had made his decision: keep on fighting. Conditions in Russia? The technical experts were amazed to the point of wonder. Example: the U.S. and British Red Cross delegations, which accompanied the mission, went through Moscow hospitals, reported that the Russian equipment was not only as good as anything anywhere in the world, but that in some instances no nation anywhere could match their stuff (equipment for blood transfusions and for serums).

Are the Russians mechanically ignorant? Their workmen can handle mechanical equipment as well as any U.S. mechanic—thanks to the universities and trade schools of Russia, where the lazy, incompetent or dull pay high tuition, the brilliant pay little or nothing.

What about the Urals? The Russians have moved enormous amounts of industrial equipment behind the Ural Mountains, out of reach of the Nazis. Much of the machinery from the Dnieper River industrial area has been hauled out in freight cars.

Censorship? Any news out of Russia is what the Russians want the world to know. Their censorship makes the German censors look like children playing with paper dolls.

Airplane production? If U.S. airplane production (now at the rate of almost 25,000 planes a year) is considered barely fair, the Russian rating is comparatively very, very good.

What do the Russians want? Not much, militarily. About a billion dollars’ worth of airplanes, tanks, machine tools.

What should the U.S. do? When it is politically possible, sign a real agreement or treaty of alliance with Great Britain and Russia.

Russians? They are very short people, look something like potatoes, and are not afraid of anyone in the world—on their own soil.

It only remained to be seen whether the mission to Moscow had got the facts or been properly bamboozled. If Russia is indeed as good as the missionaries thought, then Hitler’s armies must be still better than the U.S. already thinks.