1944. Following the British Second Army in France

Downs Meets a Very Polite British Lieutenant

Bill Downs

CBS

July 30, 1944

DOUG EDWARDS: And now for our first news direct from overseas, Admiral takes you to Normandy, Bill Downs reporting.

BILL DOWNS: The British Second Army is making slow but steady progress in its new drive south of Caumont, advancing up to three miles through the difficult wooded farmland of this hilly, fruit-growing sector.

Although there has been nothing particularly sensational in today's fighting on this British front, the new attack is going well and gains are considered satisfactory.

Early this morning I went down to a forward observation post in a front line village during the early part of the Second Army's new attack. At the forward headquarters I met a young British lieutenant who looked all the world like a schoolteacher playing soldier. The lieutenant smiled politely when I asked the way to the observation post, and then apologized for going first as we started through the rubble of the town towards the battle position.

We went around yards, in between houses, and had to climb over some rubble. "You'll have to pardon all this mess," the lieutenant said. "A shell hit here a half hour ago and pulled the rubble down."

He apologized again when we had to crawl through a hole in a stone wall. "We've been meaning to make that hole larger. Dashed uncomfortable having to crawl through such a small space."

And we finally came to the building which housed the observation post. On the door of the building were the uncomfortable words, "The enemy is watching you." On the wall opposite was the note, "Do not [inaudible]."

The lieutenant grinned a little sheepishly, "Ah, we got another shell here this morning. Put the signs up to keep the chaps from getting careless, you know?" And we climbed to the top of the house up onto the gabled roof. A bomb had conveniently lifted a few shingles out of the roof to form perfect peepholes overlooking the battlefield.

The battlefield itself actually was a little disappointing. The countryside here is so close, with high hedges, small fields, and a large number of trees, that visibility is limited. Even on this height, at the top of the building, you could see only shell-burst bomb craters and the whitish, yellowish smoke of battle.

But the lieutenant, who I believe is the politest man in the world, reached a new high in courtesy. A shell landed nearby. Dust fell from the rafters all over us. And when we got to our feet and looked around us and took a deep breath, the lieutenant brushed the dust from his shoulders. "Sorry about that," he said. And then he grinned, "We're fixing it now so that it'll never happen again."

This is Bill Downs in Normandy returning you to Admiral radio in New York.

1947. Our Perilous Future

The Cold War, the Atomic Bomb, and Hope for the Future

Bill Downs (left) and Edward R. Murrow in East Berlin standing under a Free German Youth banner in 1948

1947 Speech to the Huntington, West Virginia Teachers' Conference

by Bill Downs

I come here this morning to speak to you as a reporter. I feel that there is a kind of kinship between the profession of teaching and the job of reporting. In the first place, in no other spheres of public activity do the people get so much brains for so little money. I think you know what I mean.

But there is another alliance. When it comes right down to it, you schoolteachers are really nothing but legmen working a beat in the world's history, economics, language, and culture. You simply report to the youth of our nation what has gone on before and what is going on now and trying to make them understand it.

However, you have one advantage over my kind of reporter dealing in current events. You can sit your audience down and make it read and listen. We in the news business just hope we can make the stuff interesting and understandable enough to catch an audience. You don't know how many times a reporter wishes he could pound a story into the heads of his listeners.

I thought a long time about this so-called speech. I don't have to go into that usual line about schoolteachers—the importance of your job, the future of America, and all that stuff. I'm sure it makes you feel good, but these are no times for self-gratification.

The past seven years I've traveled a half-million miles covering news and, I suppose, searching for peace. I'm still traveling and I'm still looking. It isn't peace when there is a full-fledged civil war in China; where there are bitter and bloody revolutions underway in Java and Indochina; when there is wholesale murder underway in India; where organized assassination is the policy in Palestine, and where the Arab world in the Middle East is drawing battle lines. You can't call it peace, either, with men killing each other in the mountains of Greece and the Balkans; with possible civil war shaping up in France and Italy.

When I was in Berlin a few months ago, I was taken to a small black market club where it was possible to buy schnapps with American cigarettes. Since bartenders are often the best news sources in the world, I got to talking about conditions with one of them at this club. After hearing the usual tale of woe about the poor beaten fatherland, this bartender told me a story that used to be current when Hitler and Germany were riding high. "People used to come in here and make a toast," the bartender said. "They would lift their glasses and say, 'Enjoy the war, because the peace is going to be hell.'" The Nazis never were very good prophets. What they meant was that the postwar period would be their hell, and it is right now. But the peace is not here.

Peace is a dynamic, growing thing that operates every minute of every hour of the day. Peace is not so much what happens at this minute. It is what is going to happen tomorrow. It is people living together in harmony and dignity and without fear. We Americans know more about it than any other nation in the world, and because we do, we often assume that other people do the same. It is a natural mistake, but nevertheless such assumption is a mistake. Let me tell you what I mean.

This spring I went back over the victory route from Britain to Normandy to Berlin. My job was to talk to ordinary people; farmers, bakers, and factory workers, with only one category out of the ordinary. I also talked to a lot of schoolteachers. We talked about everything under the sun. The atomic bomb, whether Hitler is dead, the black market, the price of potatoes, and we did a lot of talking about things like communism, democracy, freedom, and peace.

Well, we in America have come to accept our freedoms as our birthright. Viewing history through the wrong end of the telescope—as we do from our privileged position on our continental island—we have assumed that all of the rest of the world wants the same things that we want. We here in America assume that the rest of the world desires to achieve what we call democratic standards of living in the same way they were achieved in this country.

But let me tell you, in England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany, you find a fading confidence and trust in the thing we call the American brand of democracy.

It's with a shock that you discover a new kind of struggle, a revolution almost underway in war-battered Europe, and the stakes are pretty much everything that we as Americans hold sacred. The pursuit of happiness is in direct competition with the potato, a vegetable burned by the ton in the United States but exceedingly rare in Europe. Liberty on the continent exists in direct ratio to the legume. And life itself has meaning for the continental peoples only in terms houses and buildings not yet constructed; in coal and steel on which depends the economy of whole populations. The problem of Europe is not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is potatoes, housing, and the pursuit of a vein of coal far underground.

Sitting in a British pub a few weeks ago I discussed this phenomenon with a group of young English engineers—men who work in industrial laboratories. The tradition of freedom is stronger in Britain than any other European country, and these men hold no high position in the factories in which they work. They are white collar workers making ordinary British salaries.

"You Americans don't understand," they said. "For centuries our country has been run by the aristocracy, an economic aristocracy in which most of the wealth of the empire was concentrated. You talk about economic freedom? We say that the Labour government, by its nationalization program in taking over the coal mines and the railroads and the rest, is really for the first time giving us economic freedom."

"But," I said, "isn't nationalization by its very character banishing freedom of economic opportunity?"

They turned to me and grinned. "That's the trouble with you Americans. You don't understand. Now who in Britain is going to demand the freedom to build another railroad? And where are you going to discover another coal mine? Our geologists have ended that search long ago. Now, just whose freedom is being banished?"

Some days later we were in Normandy talking with a calvados farmer. He was typical of that rich farming area in his support for the new people's rally headed by General De Gaulle. The General claims his new movement is not a political party, just a unity movement to bring France back to some sort of national cohesiveness. My Normandy farmer was vehement in his viewpoint. He, like all French farmers, is making more money now than at any other time in his life.

"What France needs is a strong leader," he said. "De Gaulle could do it. Maybe even if he has to go beyond the law and take control. Look at the stupid government now—those socialists and communists and everything. No wonder they don't get my wheat. The government-controlled price of wheat is so low that it would not even pay me to feed my cattle. I tell you, as long as the government does these things, I'll sell to the black market. And why not? I should keep those people in power with my wheat."

In Berlin I met a blond, boyish looking youth, 24-years-old and typical of the thousands now in Germany who were weaned on Hitlerism. I tried to talk with him about democracy and freedom. He looked puzzled. "I have lived only under the Third Reich," he said. "You people say we should have democracy. Well, we lost the war, so let's have it. But look at Germany today." His arm swept towards the ruins that is Aachen, towards the lifeless people shuffling along the ruined streets. "The war has been over for two years. Is this what you call democracy? At least the people had enough to eat under Hitler."

Thus it went all across Europe.

The ideals of freedom and equality—the things that we accept so smugly in America—are being lost in a frustrating struggle for individual existence in Europe.

I spent many hours trying to find the key to what is happening in Europe. The one thing that struck me in London, in Saint-Lô, in Nijmegen, Essen, and Berlin was the same cynicism in both victors and vanquished. You ask about the atomic bomb. "Yes," the people say, "we know how terrible it is. But while you Americans have it now, we will have it soon."

When I tried to explain the horror of what I saw at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when I started talking about the frightening test I witnessed at Bikini, the people looked vacantly at the ruins of their city and shrugged their shoulders.

When I asked them about the United Nations, about the aims of world peace and world government, they would smile at me and say, "Oh yes, the United Nations. An interesting experiment. Tell me, do you Americans really believe it will work?"

When I told them that many of our atomic scientists believe that another war, an atomic war, might wipe out what we know as civilization, again you would get a cynical, fatalistic reaction which said, "So what?"

The choice is still being made. In some cases, communism is being enforced with guns, as in Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland. And let me remind you that the American pressures on Greece and Italy have almost been as powerful, if not as bloody, in maintaining our position in Europe.

The winter in Europe is going to be crucial. I wish I could tell you what is going to happen. At the moment, the communist movement in Italy seems temporarily stymied. But if there is mass starvation in Italy this winter, and if distribution and production of available supplies collapse, you can look for a resurgence of the communists there, and possibly the fall of the De Gasperi government.

The other critical point in Western Europe is France. The municipal elections were a setback for the communists—a surprising one. But the word that is whispered in political conversations across France is "civil war." The emergence of the so-called "people's rally" under the leadership of General De Gaulle has brought another factor into the nation's political scene. Democratic Frenchmen with whom I talked feared it might happen as early as last spring. Now our kind of democracy faces in France a threat from the extreme right wing as well as from the left.

If there is a chaotic food and distribution problem this winter, and if the communists lead anything like a general strike, you may see bloody fighting there. The French army leadership is known to be ultraconservative, and in some circles you can hear open discussions of plans for the army garrisons outside Paris to march on the city. Then you hear of plans for using the occupation army in Saar to subdue the rest of the country if necessary.

I want to warn you that this is all speculation, but it is the kind of disturbing stories that are sweeping the country. The last right-left split in the elections have done little toward healing the breach. I talked with communist leaders in Paris about all this civil war talk. They merely shrug their shoulders and say, "Remember, we still have our guns from the Maquis days. And anyway, how many French soldiers who were in the Maquis would follow a military campaign against their own comrades?"

These are some of the reasons that the Marshall Plan is so important right now. There is no assurance, of course, that all the food in America would stop the ideological struggle now underway in Europe. But one thing is for certain: aid from America is the best insurance we have that our brand of democracy has the best chance of surviving if the people involved have American food in their bellies.

How about Russia? How is she doing in her competing campaign to sell her brand of so-called peace?

There's a story circulating Europe these days that sums up the situation pretty well. The story concerns one of those mass military demonstrations which the Russians like so much to display. Red Square was packed with phalanx after phalanx of soldiers.

When Stalin appeared on the podium, General Zhukov shouted, "Attention!" The entire square froze to ramrod stiffness as one man. Suddenly there was a loud sneeze. Someone started laughing, and in a few moments a wave of mirth convulsed the whole display.

Stalin leaned over the parapet and said, "Who did that?" There was a wave of quiet, but no one answered.

Stalin signaled to the NKVD, who upped Tommy guns and shot down the first line of soldiers. Again, Stalin said, "Who did that?"

More quiet. Stalin signaled once again, and the second row of soldiers went down. For the third time, Stalin said, "Who did that?"

Just as he was to signal for the next wave of soldiers to be shot, a hand went up way in the back and someone cried, "It was me!"

Stalin leaned over and replied, "Bless you, comrade!"

There is an almost pathological fear of Soviet Russia throughout Western Europe. The stories of the terror that swept over the Russian zone of Germany in the early days of the Nazi defeat have been told everywhere. While most Europeans agree that the Germans had it coming, they also don't like the idea of being potential enemies of these strange people from the East. This fear of the Russians and their collective philosophy of communism is simultaneously the biggest argument for and against the Soviet position. The military threat is very real. Even our own military men in the occupation areas will admit that, if the Red Army wanted to move today, they would be on the channel in less than a month.

There are considerations other than the military. Russia's productive capacity is just being tapped. Nations like France and Italy and the Low Countries—not even England—are going to burn all their bridges with the East just because America might desire it. America is regarded as a fickle young giant, rich and powerful, but not necessarily dependable. If, for example, the present Congress at its special session now pending curtails the Marshall Plan or procrastinates on food or other materials needed immediately to get Europe through winter, it would be the greatest argument for communism and the Russian position that could be made.

I think the point is that communism is a philosophy of despair. If we provide that despair through failing to act and act quickly, then our position overseas is, and deserves to be, weakened.

There's one other thing on my mind. It is the Atom. It is a word I have come to hate. I wonder if man has the common sense and moral strength to handle this new energy he has discovered.

Before I was assigned to cover the Bikini tests, I had a good look at both Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or at least the place where these two Japanese cities had been before we blew the nation out of the war.

I wish there were words to describe these places. John Hersey, in his book Hiroshima, one of the greatest reporting jobs of all time, has done the best job of describing it. He told the story of a half-dozen people and what happened to them when the sky fell down. But as excellent as it is, the unreality, the horror, the overwhelming tragedy cannot really be told in words. There just aren't any that described what happened when we dropped those two atomic bombs.

What you would have to do is get the stories of all 130,000 residents of Hiroshima, and you would have to have the stories of the pain and burning of some 30,000 of these people who were killed or who died of radioactivity. The latest reports form Nagasaki and Hiroshima say that only now, two years later, have the people begun the task of reconstruction. When you look at a city devastated in such a manner, the hope and life goes out of the survivors. There is simply too much to do. The human mind rejects the prospect.

I could make a guess from what I saw in Japan and at Bikini to give you a completely unofficial prediction of what would happen if an atomic bomb were dropped on this city of Huntington, West Virginia.

Let's say, for example, an atomic bomb of the old type was dropped directly over this Chamber of Commerce building. You could write off everything living within mile and a half radius. The flash would burn the patterns of miners' overall straps into their backs. A woman wearing a black dress would suddenly find the dress in flames and burning her to death. Carpets on floors where the flash entered windows would burst into flames. Roofs would be crushed in by the concussion. Fragments of glass would penetrate through concrete walls and through doors to stick in an opposite corridor. And following these would be a three mile area immediately in flames all at once, and no fire department in the world could control the blaze. Then, for another two mile radius beyond this main center of devastation, windows would be blown out, roofs ripped off, water mains and gas mains would be broken and dangerous. Telephone poles would be down. There would be no communication. Automobiles would be crushed like accordions.

Huntington would cease to be a city. It would be a series of isolated neighborhoods in grave danger of destruction; the city would be in shambles. And in this outer area of destruction, a few weeks after the blast, burns would not heal. People exposed to the gamma rays or to the highly lethal gases would find themselves losing their appetites. They would begin to vomit even water. They would lose all interest in life, and pretty soon they would just lay down and die. This is the way radioactivity works on the human system.

It is even more horrible, but as I said, there are no words to describe the real horror, and there are better men with words than I.

I believe what I just described to you is a pretty fair estimate of what would happen to Huntington with the old-type, experimental atom bomb which we used at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The thing to remember is that we have now perfected the bomb to where it is many times more efficient.

These things occupied our thoughts at Bikini. We talked with the scientists who developed the bomb on board observer ships, in airplanes, and at Bikini and Kwajalein. There was a lot of argument among these men as to what is and what is not a secret. But, generally speaking, they agreed on one thing: that civilization now has in its own hands the means by which it can destroy itself, and that the other nations of the world will, in a comparatively short length of time, will have the so-called atomic secret in operation. The time for other nations to produce such an explosive was variably estimated from five to twenty-five years.

I still have bad dreams about the atomic bomb. The thing that worries me is that more people don't have bad dreams. People like Mr. Molotov, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Bevin, and a guy named Chiang Kai-shek. As a matter of fact, I believe that if I could project my atomic nightmares into every person's dreams in the world, we would solve this problem of what to do with the atomic explosive. We darned-well would turn it over to an international commission—a world government—with the guts and power to see that every atom in every part of the world behaved itself.

Which brings me to the end of my report. This has not been an optimistic story. This is not the best of all possible worlds, but I believe that there are sincere efforts to improve it. That is where you come in. But you must know what you are doing and understand what you are teaching. And that's where we reporters come in. We struggle as honestly and the best we can to get the facts straight, and the interpretation and definitions honest and fair.

Right now we are having a lot of trouble with definitions. Vulgar misuses of justice and semantics have been displayed in Washington in the past few weeks. The words under definition have a familiar ring; "capital," "labor," liberal, conservative, communist, and fascist. In my travels over the country I have heard a lot of foolish and irresponsible uses of these words. Right now, a man who advocates an increase in the national minimum wage might be branded a communist. On the other side of the fence, any person who demands that the government leave business alone might conversely be called a fascist.

A reporter recognizes such labels as ridiculous and foolish; even dangerous. There are, of course, communists in America, and there are men in this country who like and support the concepts of fascism. You are bound to have that in a country where there is freedom.

For the most part these extremists on the right and left are men in search of power, or who think they know where the power should be shifted. But our particular form of government doesn't believe in power as such—as a goal. Power is a byproduct of democracy; it is not the purpose of that form of government. However, it is a byproduct that needs watching. When it gets out of the hands of the people, or when the people lose their interest in this factor in their government, then there is trouble.

Right now we are watching a great experiment in power; world power. Considering the difficulties, the obstacles, and the plain ordinary trouble it takes to translate from Russian to French to English at the United Nations sessions, the world is not doing too badly.

It has come down to the point where, if someone around the United Nations conference table wants to say that he thinks such-and-such is a so-and-so, the words are pronounced and the issues are thrashed out. Just as the hope of America is in free speech and free thought, so it is in the UN.

Vital issues are still pending in the international organization. It is still a baby, and often a difficult one. It needs changing more often than not, and there is a lot of unnecessary noise and annoyance. Occasionally it gets colic, and every once in a while it has to be spanked by some nation or other. But it seems to be growing, and everyone is trying to raise it to be a healthy boy with no threat that it becomes a delinquent child.

Politicians and statesmen, when they grow old and retire from their jobs, have an old saying: "The people of a city, state, or country usually get the kind of government they deserve."

In these days of change, evolution, revolution, and readjustment in the process that we call peace, I think we can improve on the old politicians and statesmen. We can expand it a little.

"The people of the world will get the kind of world they deserve."

The world is up to you.

1943. Soviets Celebrate the Fall of Italy

Italy Ripped From the Axis

Benito Mussolini in 1943 (source)

(For more, see the complete 1943 Moscow reports.)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

September 9, 1943

First Soviet reaction to the sensational capitulation of Italy is printed this morning in Pravda saying "the big victories of the Red Army and the victories of the Anglo-American troops have created all prerequisites for the dealing of a mortal blow on Hitlerian Germany and the achievement of a quick victory."

Pravda emphasizes that the fact new Red Army victories coincides with the fall of Italy has been no accident. It says that neither Mussolini nor Badoglio could get help from Hitler when the British and American troops threatened Italy's mainland because the German forces were tied up on the Soviet German front. "The Red Army victories in its summer offensive compelled Hitler definitely to leave his Italian ally to its own fate."

Pravda also points out that, last summer and winter, the Red Army drew blood from some of the best of Mussolini's Fascist divisions: ". . . about 200,000 selected Italian troops never returned from the Soviet Union."

Then the newspaper makes this significant statement: "Italy is now out of action as an ally of Hitlerian Germany. Thus a telling blow has been dealt to the Hitlerian coalition. There can be no doubt but that the unconditional capitulation of Italy will make the strongest impression on those allies and accomplices of Hitler in Europe who still participate in his plundering coalition."

Pravda continues: "The fate of Italy is for these other vassals a warning example. They also, in a different minute, will be thrown to their fate . . . The fact that Italy is out of action has reinforced the international isolation of Hitlerian Germany, violently worsening her military and strategic position."

The events coincided with the Red Army's capture of Stalino (Donetsk) and surrounding cities on September 8, 1943. US Ambassador to the Soviet Union William H. Standley issued a statement in response to Bill Downs' request for comment:

"We Americans here in Moscow got a great thrill tonight as we watched the rockets announcing the splendid Soviet victory of Stalino—particularly when we realized that this celebration coincided with the announcement of the armistice in Italy, It must be a source of great gratification to free men everywhere to know that the forces fighting for freedom and liberty are gaining successes from every direction and that these efforts are going forward with increasing momentum. I know that I speak for you my fellow countrymen when I extend my congratulations to the Red army for their great victory in the Don Basin. I know that I speak for the Russian people in extending congratulations to the men of the Allied forces whose sacrifices and skill have resulted in the complete surrender of Italy. A victory for one of the United Nations is a victory for all the United Nations."

1943. Life as a War Correspondent in Moscow

The Curtain Rises

A group of war correspondents playing cards in Moscow, 1943

From the memoir The Curtain Rises (1944) by Quentin Reynolds, pp. 156-165:

IT HAPPENS IN MOSCOW

By QUENTIN REYNOLDS

Jean Champenois, who writes for the Free French Agency, is one of the most popular correspondents in Moscow. He has a comfortable apartment, and one day he held a cocktail party. Actually, of course, there are no cocktails in Moscow. But the party was a success. Two ambassadors and three generals were present as well as several correspondents. We sipped sweet wine, and conversation in French, Russian and English filled the room. A Soviet general was discoursing with considerable knowledge on the strategy of the Stalingrad victory when he was interrupted by the shrill crowing of a rooster.

A moment later, there came the unmistakable triumphant cackle of a hen. Both sounds seemed a bit out of place in an apartment at the center of Moscow. I asked Champenois where the noise came from.

"I keep a rooster and a hen," he said casually. "Didn't you know? They're in the kitchen. Come along."

I went into the next room and, sure enough, there was a belligerent-looking rooster that made ominous, throaty noises when we walked in, and a plump motherly-looking hen that had just deposited an egg on the floor.

"I get three eggs a week from the hen," Jean said proudly, quite unconscious of the incongruity of turning a kitchen into a farmyard. "I may get rid of the rooster. He doesn't like me. I think I'll have him for dinner some night."

"If you could only get a cow now, Jean, you could have milk and butter and an occasional steak," I suggested.

"I wish I had a cow," Jean said wistfully. "I could keep her here in the living room. But how would I get her up the stairs?"

Things like that happen in Moscow. The ambassadors and the British, American and Soviet generals saw nothing out of the ordinary in Jean's sharing his apartment with the hen and the rooster. In Moscow, the unusual seems normal, and daily life is a series of paradoxes. Technically, Moscow is still a city under siege, and martial law is still observed.

The midnight curfew rule is strictly enforced, even on correspondents, and, during the day, avenues are thronged with men and women in uniforms, armored cars, American jeeps and guns.

Yet, within the limits of military supervision, four and a half million people live fairly normal lives—as normal as life can be in a city dedicated one hundred percent to the war effort. Correspondents who share this existence have also come to regard life in Moscow as fairly normal, although they admit that outsiders would probably disagree with them.

One night the ballet Swan Lake was shown with the incomparable Ulanova as the prima ballerina. This is by far the most popular ballet in Russia, and the Swan Lake performance has all the glamor and éclat of an opening night at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. No member of the diplomatic corps would miss it. Neither would the British and American military missions stationed here. It was a gala occasion, for which tickets had to be purchased weeks in advance. Between acts, according to Russian custom, the audience paraded around the large lobby.

Two American correspondents, Bill Downs and David Nichol, were among the lucky ones to obtain tickets. They joined the parade, jostling elbows with gold-epauletted Red Army generals, with American and British generals, with ambassadors and with the beauty and culture of Moscow. But they wanted to smoke, and neither one had a cigarette.

Everyone is strictly rationed on Russian cigarettes in Moscow. American cigarettes are available only when a visiting fireman arrives from America with a surplus supply. Downs had a package of smoking tobacco, but there's no cigarette paper in Moscow. Two great journalistic minds pondered the problem, and then canny Nichol, with a triumphant cry, drew from his pocket a book of subway tickets. These are printed on very thin paper.

The two master minds hurriedly rolled cigarettes and joined the moving circle, the cynosure of envious eyes. It is hardly a sight one would see at a fashionable New York opening, but it seemed quite normal in the lobby of the Filial Theatre.

The ballet theatre and motion-picture houses are packed every night in wartime Moscow. At present we have a large military mission in Moscow, and the boys are great ballet fans. Hard-boiled sergeants who a year ago were arguing as to the relative merits of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis now argue just as heatedly about Ulanova, Lepeshinskaya and Semenova.

Moscow loves its theatre. In addition to the Moscow Art Theatre, the Maly, Filial, Stanislavski and other old-established theatres, there are many others situated in various Moscow parks. There are five in a park called the Hermitage, only a few minutes from the center of the city, and three in the Park of Culture and Rest. The huge Bolshoi Theatre, bombed more than a year ago, is still closed, but Moscow rejoices over rumors that it is going to reopen soon. In all, there are thirty theatres in Moscow and there's seldom an empty seat in any of them.

The most popular dramas are the old favorites: Anna Karenina, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Cherry Orchard (in which Chekhov's wife, for whom it was written, still appears), while in opera The Queen of Spades (Tchaikovsky), Carmen (Bizet), A Life for the Czar (Glinka), and Traviata (Verdi) bring in the crowds.

Dminitri Shostakovich, who lived across the square from me at the Moscow Hotel and whose Seventh Symphony won such rapturous praises when performed in New York last year, is not considered quite the greatest in Moscow, where the critical faculties are very well developed. Factory workers, street-car conductors, and Red Army men and women will argue that Dmitri, while a nice young guy, really doesn't belong in the same league with such big-timers as Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, Rachmaninoff or the brilliant Khachaturian. Toscanini, incidentally, sent Shostakovich the records of the New York Philharmonic playing his Seventh, but at a party given by Ilya Ehrenburg, the composer told one of the guests (a Russian war correspondent) that he hadn't heard the records yet. He didn't have a phonograph.

The Soviet Union has lost nearly one third of all European Russia, and six million of her people have been killed, captured, or temporarily enslaved in occupied territory. Yet Moscow, much as she grieves in private, sees no reason for giving up her theatre and opera.

All our military people here speak the language. With typical army efficiency, they were all trained in Russian before being appointed to this post. It's strange to hear unmistakable Brooklyn or Middle Western accents arguing amiably in Russian. All correspondents, too (with the exception of this one), know Russian fairly well, and when we played hearts or gin rummy (our only dissipation), we usually played in Russian. Families of correspondents might blink in surprise if they heard fond sons or husband look at a hand and cry out with disgust, "Ochen plokbo!" which means a very lousy hand.

The brightest minds in the American Embassy invented a drink composed of one-third vodka and two-thirds canned grapefruit juice, which was excellent. But the supply of grapefruit juice was soon exhausted. We did all we could to disguise the taste of vodka, but only one intrepid correspondent actually solved the problem.

I had a personal interest in his experiment because it was made on the occasion of my birthday. The scientist responsible is Walter Kerr, of the New York Herald Tribune. On such occasions we all contributed whatever we had. Most of us contributed vodka, but Eddy Gilmore of the Associated Press and Harold King of Reuters each managed to snare a bottle of champagne. It was Kerr who invaded the kitchen of the Metropole Hotel to produce three lemons, an unheard-of luxury here. And then this genius went to work.

The idea, he said, came to him in a dream. He squeezed three lemons into a large glass pitcher, cut the rinds up and threw them in, poured in a bottle of vodka after that, and then filled the pitcher with champagne. The drink was ochen khorosho—as the boys say when they want to bestow particular praise on something. Kerr had one thing to add that made us regard him in awe. It proved the value of the scholarly influence of the Herald Tribune.

"I have named this drink Katusha!" he said solemnly. Katusha (a Russian gun) is a great anti-personnel weapon. So was this drink, but it made a birthday for a very homesick correspondent.

Moscow never forgets that there's a war on and that this war is in her back yard. No bomb has dropped on Moscow for a year, but we all know that German bombers have attempted to get through the outer defenses of the city many times only to be repulsed by anti-aircraft guns and night fighters. Perhaps the enemy bombers will break through some night. Moscow is ready. Air wardens are on duty at every office building, factory and block of apartment houses. We would see them when we came home at night, standing alert in the still, pale light.

In the spring Moscow thinks of next winter. Every factory, every civil, social and political organization sends selected groups into the country for short periods. There they fell trees, cut trunks into logs and cart wood back to Moscow. There was a shortage of fuel last winter in Moscow, and thousands of apartments had to go without heat. There will be no shortage of wood next winter.

Moscow has inaugurated a tremendous back-to-the-land movement. Every Moscow citizen has been allotted a plot of land outside the city. Each Saturday afternoon, one would see strange processions trooping to various railroad stations. Hundreds of men, women and children walked along with hoes, spades and rakes over their shoulders, bound for their own little plots.

Special trains, with transportation costing virtually nothing, took them to the country. Urbane Moscovites developed into amateur farmers. Many spent the night sleeping in the open by their plots of ground and then worked all day Sunday on their potatoes, carrots and cabbages.

One day a paper carried a page-one story warning people that they only had five more days in which to plant potatoes, by far the most precious and sought-after vegetable in Moscow.

In the city itself, every back yard, every vacant lot has been cultivated. The American Embassy, on one of Moscow's main streets—Mokhovaia—had a ten-foot strip of grass in front of it. Even this was transformed into a truck farm which produced radishes, cabbage and carrots.

A portion of the grounds of Spasso House, residence of the of the American Ambassador, has been transformed into a farm. Under the skilled hands of Boston-bred Eddie Page, Second Secretary, thirty-three chickens, three rabbits and eight ducks were being fattened in the garage and in the yard back of the house.

Page thought he had made a ten-strike when he decided to breed rabbits. He had visions of hundreds of them scampering about and later gracing the embassy table. When weeks passed and the rabbits still remained three in number, a more rural-minded member of the embassy staff whispered into the ear of Page that, unfortunately, all his rabbits were of the same sex.

With the approach of summer, Moscow threw aside her somber raiment, and the streets became alive with color.

Flower stalls in the markets were gay with masses of peonies, lilies-of-the-valley, forget-me-nots, and buttercups brought in from the country by farmers. The flowers were eagerly snatched by people who wouldn't mind the lack of meat on their tables if they could decorate them with a few touches of summer.

Girls in bright print frocks mingled with crowds of uniformed men. The most common Red Army uniform is the green blouse, dark blue trousers, black boots, and khaki cap trimmed with red. Officers wear golden epaulettes on their shoulders. The immaculate whiteness of our own naval officers and trim U.S. Army uniforms were common sights on Gorky Street. Occasionally, a tall Cossack swaggered by, complete with round fur hat and dagger hanging at his waist.

No one could ever accuse Moscovites of being hoarders. Secure in the knowledge that pensions will take care of them in their old age and that medical care is free should illness come, they spend every ruble they earn to make life more easy. If you mention the hard times inevitably ahead of them, they shrug their shoulders, smile, and murmur their favorite word, "Nichevo!" Money is merely something to be quickly transformed into commodity goods.

It is typical of Moscow that, although prices were fantastically high on unrationed goods, you could obtain a precious, almost priceless icon in exchange for two bars of soap. And a dressmaker, instead of charging you rubles for embroidering a blouse, would ask half a pound of sugar or a quart of vodka.

The Moscow maiden takes good care of her close. This is especially true of shoes, which are now virtually unobtainable except on the black market at a cost of $500. Obviously, all the leather is needed for the army.

Coming out of the opera one night, a crowd was greeted by a terrific downpour. In Moscow, everyone walks (no cabs or private cars, and the subway range is very limited).

Shoes do not last long if subjected to many downpours, and this night I saw a half dozen women remove their shoes nonchalantly, put them under their coats, and brave the rain barefooted. And one army officer, obviously wearing new boots, followed suit.

Things happen in Moscow which happen nowhere else. Janet Weaver, Moscow correspondent of the New York Daily Worker, is popular with her colleagues not only because she is the only American girl who has been in Moscow throughout the war, not only because of the charm which seems to be part of any Georgia-born girl, but because she is the only woman in Russia who can make lemon meringue pie as we know it at home.

One night there was a knock at the door of the apartment where Janet and her husband live. A fifteen-year-old girl stood there. Her name was Nadia Tomova and she was going to graduate from high school soon, she said. She had been selected to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Nadia had a copy of the words, but did not know the tune. Knowing that Janet was an American, she had come to ask her to teach her our national anthem.

Janet had once taught school in her native Georgia. She took the child to the home of a friend who had a piano; there she taught Nadia the tune and the correct pronunciation of the words. At the graduation exercises, Nadia Tomova was a terrific success.

One day, Captain Herbert Callis, skipper of an American merchant ship temporarily anchored in a Russian port, came to Moscow for a week's vacation. I showed him around town. Captain Callis, whose home address is Blakes, Virginia, made a rather profound observation on Russia's capital.

"Friendliest damn town I ever did see," he declared enthusiastically, in his Southern drawl. "And it's the truth that anyone in this town big enough to talk is wearing a uniform."

That's almost literally true; and those who aren't in uniform are doing other war work. Moscow is a strange town, but it's a town of friendly people. No foreigner, and very few Russians, understand this country of paradox where the unusual is typical.

Once when I was very puzzled about something that happened in Russia, when I was trying to rationalize something that just wouldn't add up, I brought my perplexity to my colleague, Leland Stowe.

Lee said, "Don't try to rationalize this country or you'll go nuts." There was a Russian poet named Tyutchev who has been dead about one hundred years. A few lines from one of his poems have become a proverb in Russia: "You cannot understand Russia with your reason; you cannot measure Russia with a yardstick; you can only believe in Russia."

I have followed the poet's advice ever since. I think Russia has earned our faith. You don't have to understand the strange, paradoxical country to know that although she is dedicated to war, she has not allowed the scanty food, the lack of fuel, and the horror of battle to dampen her spirit or shake her faith in her eventual destiny.

Rumors reached us even in far-off Moscow that a big operation was due soon in the Mediterranean. I thought it was time I did some traveling with the American Army. I said good-bye to Russia, leaving the country with high faith in her destiny and with the conviction that when the war is over Stalin will be very easy for us to do business with. I headed for Cairo.

Moscow, June, 1943