Foreign News: Planic Rush

In their hurry to finish up everything as fast as possible, Russians have worked themselves into a state of five-year-planic. Two months ago Joseph Stalin sent his hard-boiled henchman, Comrade Lazar Kaganovitch, to tell the frenzied subway builders of Moscow that they were going too fast. “I am displeased with so much rush work!” roared Comrade Kaganovitch.”Also Comrade Stalin is displeased. Take things slower and do everything well!”

Not even this order from the Kremlin could check Moscow’s subway planic. The original plan demanded that last week the first train should run over the first mile and a half of Moscow’s subway, and run it did, through a chaos of unfinished stations and propped-up tunnel walls.

Consisting of two Russian-built cars patterned on those in Manhattan’s subway, the “first train,” said Associated Press Correspondent Charles Stephenson Smith, “was hailed with great joy by a population eagerly awaiting relief from overcrowded surface transportation.”

It may be months or years before Moscovites can actually ride on a subway complete with stations, tickets and all such necessaries. But last week the 70,000 Moscow subway builders, fired with frantic zeal, pledged themselves not to slow down, vowed that next January a train shall run over the entire seven-mile underground line as demanded by the original plan.