Paradise, Ltd.

Correspondents in Moscow pinched themselves to make sure they weren't dreaming. They didn't want to say it too loud, but for one eventful week their dispatches had gone through the Soviet censors--uncensored, and fast. Maybe their censorship protest (TIME. Nov. 12)--which Viacheslav M. Molotov had brushed aside as "not solid"--had done some good, after all. The Associated Press was also inclined to credit a strange interlude at the Foreign Commissar's big reception on Nov. 7. At midnight Molotov strolled over to bulky, balding APman Eddy Gilmore.

"I want to drink a toast with American Correspondent Gilmore," Molotov began amiably. ''If you were in my position, what sort of toast would you propose?"

Gilmore blinked, said he thought a toast to a better understanding between the press of the Soviet Union and the United States would be good.

Dry or Buttered? "That is a good toast.'' Molotov agreed dryly, "but what is your main issue as a correspondent now?''

"Mine is trying to write an interpretation of your speech last night at the Kremlin, which I thought was the most important in months."

"Now, come on," said Molotov. "You are not a politician and I will not be one. You know correspondents do not like Soviet censorship. You want to wipe it out."

"Well, sir, you read our letter. . . ." Gilmore parried.

"What would you say," Molotov asked him archly, "if I told you I would agree to reciprocity?"

"I think it would be a very fine thing."

"Let us drink a toast, then," said Molotov. When he had bottoms-upped his glass, Molotov held it upside down over his head, beaming, and walked on.

What Goes On? Wrote the New York Times'? able, ironic Brooks Atkinson: "What is going on around here, anyway? . . . [It] is like walking out of a dark room into blinding sunlight. . . . It takes time to learn how to use freedom. . . .

"Before subscribing to the theory that there is a change in policy towards foreigners and foreign affairs, this correspondent would like to wait two or three years. . . . Call Moscow at the moment a limited paradise."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.