Moscow Notes

P:Most important new project of Joseph Stalin, who already has the world's largest army (1,300,000 men who serve without pay but get their board and keep), is to have Soviet workers put together in Russia a first-class Red Navy out of parts made abroad. This incipient "Assembled Navy," the first in world history, is now in the hush-hush stage, but last week the U. S. State Department announced that the U. S. S. R. has suddenly become the largest customer for U. S. war materials, and that last month the first shipment of disassembled U. S. parts for the Soviet Navy went out--parts for capital ships of Great Power proportions mounting 16-inch guns.

P:Back in Moscow last week, U. S. Ambassador Joseph E. Davies explained that his tour of 14 European capitals was no personal junket but ordered by the State Department, since President Roosevelt wants to know how other countries feel about the U. S. S. R., now the biggest buyer of U. S. war goods (see above).

"The prospects for European peace are better than they were a few months ago," said Ambassador Davies, indicating that this conclusion figures in his report to President Roosevelt. "Incidents which prior to 1914 would have precipitated war have occurred in the recent crisis, but have been localized without an outbreak of general hostilities."

P:Mindful that 77 Germans were executed in Adolf Hitler's "blood purge" (TIME, July 9; 23, 1934), Moscow correspondents are keeping a careful box score on Joseph Stalin's, cabled last week that in the past 13 months 668 Russians have been shot by Soviet firing squads. Executed in Moscow last week for "attempting to restore Capitalism" were nine more Soviet purgees.

P:Every few months Dictator Stalin is rumored to have all but abandoned the Communist struggle to foment from Moscow revolution in other lands. Recently the offices near the Kremlin of the Comintern or official Moscow bureau for fomenting the "World Revolution of the World Proletariat" were closed, and not until last week did Moscow correspondents rediscover the Comintern occupying magnificent new quarters overlooking Moscow on the Lenin Hills. Divided into three five-story buildings connected by three-story sections, the colossal new quarters for fomenting World Revolution comprise just over 1,000 rooms.

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