"Thanks & Goodbye!"

Russia's No. 1 Propagandist-journalist, slight, greying Ilya Ehrenburg, had spent two months in the U.S., encouraged to look where he liked. Last week, for the United Press, he wrote a 1,700-word bread & butter letter, full of praise for America's splendid highways and damnation for U.S. newspapers. Obviously, if this great country was not getting along with his great country, the fault was America's Excerpts:

"This is a great and complex country. . . . It is easy to sing her praise, it is not difficult to be satirical about her, but the most difficult is to understand her. . . .

"The writers of the whole world are charmed with the books of Hemingway and Faulkner, but when you enter an ordinary movie house on Main Street to see an ordinary picture, your head will turn over the depths and the immensity of its platitude . . . I have seen luncheons organized by the Lions Club, where full-grown men, merchants of suspenders or of electric ranges, imitating lions, roared upon command. . . ."

Complexions v. Consciences. "I remember how the American newspapers were roused to indignation at the fact that, in the elections in Yugoslavia, people who had compromised themselves by collaboration . . . were deprived of their right to vote. I have been in Mississippi, where half of the population were deprived of their right to vote. What is better: to deprive of the right to vote a man who has a black conscience or one who has a black complexion? . . .

"During these two months, I have read a pack of fantastic stories about my person. It is easy to understand all they invent . . . about Russia. One says, they make up stories because the Russians allegedly do not admit Americans into their country. By the way, I know a great many American journalists in Moscow. There are among them conscientious men, and others who are not. . . .

"Great and serious papers are thrashing their readers with false information on Russia; they stir up every conflict, trying to convince the people that war between our two countries is possible. I want to shout: No, this war is impossible! . . . Nothing separates us but the curtain of fog drawn by the slanderers.

"The press campaign is dangerous not because the American reader is stupid. Almost in all cases he is more intelligent than the newspaper he reads. . . . But how should he know what is going on in Russia? . . ."

America, Be Cautious. "In the meantime, it is not we who . . . ostentatiously rattle with the secret weapon. I want to tell my American friends: be more cautious--bombs, even if they are not atomic, are bad toys. You cannot play with them; they explode unexpectedly! . .

"Now taking leave from my American friends, I want to say: I don't know when our peoples will be able to shake hands peacefully, when inept and criminal speeches about a third world war will stop, when we shall again meet, like brothers. . . . I want to believe that this will be soon, that the American people will tame its rabble-rousers, its Fascists, the men who dream of a crusade against Moscow, and with love I tell America: Thanks for the friendly reception and goodbye!"

Another visiting journalist, France's Louis Martin-Chauffier, last week summed up the U.S.: "Good dough without yeast." Wrote he in the Paris Liberation: "American society is tough, commanded by the tough law of profit, by the even tougher law of the struggle for existence, reducing man either to a machine or to a nervous being straining simultaneously for the conquest of comfort and for self-defense. . . . "

After the fatigue of the day, the American has no taste for the leisure of his evenings or his holidays. Either he has his bed; or radio, a movie, whiskey. . . . Above all, no thinking. One escapes from reflection, meditation, solitude. Yet, what is civilization if not the proper use of leisure?"

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