Recognize Reds?

After turning their well-tailored backs upon Red Russians for 15 years, sleek U. S. State Department officials cocked wary ears last week at a breeze of rumors that Josef Stalin in the Kremlin Palace and Franklin Roosevelt in the White House will soon be on formal, friendly diplomatic terms.

Off the Amberjack II came reports that her Skipper-President had told Professor Moley to take up U. S.-Russian recognition at the World Conference with moon-faced twinkly-eyed Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinov. In London last week correspondents noticed that Comrade Litvinov, once accustomed to being snubbed by Statesman Stimson at Geneva, now hobnobs in friendly fashion with Snubber Stimson's successor, Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In the lobbying skirmish fortnight ago to get Vice Chief U. S. Delegate Cox elected Chairman of the Conference Monetary Committee (TIME, June 26), Comrade Litvinov battled from the first for Mr. Cox, battled again for the tariff proposal made last week by Mr. Hull (see p. 17). Even the British Government, Tory-dominated and leery of Moscow, began to court Comrade Litvinov. Expelled from Britain in 1918 as a "dangerous revolutionist," the roly-poly Russian lunched last week at No. 10 Downing Street, mingled his thick Semitic sibilants with the rich open vowels of Scot MacDonald.

Recognition, with no strings attached. Nebraska's grey-thatched, vehement Senator George William Norris urged in Washington last week. Seasoned observers pointed out that the issue is actually not recognition but credits. Only in case the R. F. C. or some other great font of U. S. credit is opened to the Soviet Union would U. S. producers, still profoundly suspicious of Josef Stalin & Co., feel safe in accepting the flood of orders which Russia has stood ready for years to give on credit.

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