The Tourists

Three roving Americans roamed Europe on self-appointed rounds last week. The quietest was William Z. Foster, national chairman of the U.S. Communist Party, who padded noiselessly from capital to capital while he conferred with top comrades.

Almost as quiet was Harold Stassen, self-avowed G.O.P. presidential aspirant, headed homeward after an eight-week junket which had touched almost every country in Europe. He had spent most of his time with businessmen, or conferring with political leaders. He had seen Stalin (see PRESS). Last week, in Stockholm, his path crossed Henry Wallace's--the third of the trio. They did not meet. Said Stassen of Wallace: "I did not come here to listen to him." Said Wallace of Stassen: "Maybe he feared he would get tainted."

Henry Wallace's English hosts were pleased but shaken. What could be made of a man who smeared marmalade on his rhubarb at breakfast? Then there was the broadcast over Britain's Government-owned BBC. Carefully his sponsors explained that the occasion was nonpolitical, calling for light pleasantries. Wallace had nodded vaguely, mumbled that he understood. Then he launched into a violent attack on U.S. "power politics." Said a sponsor: "We were appalled--but delighted, too. We could never have got it on the air ourselves."

Said a London cockney: "He certainly knows how to talk to common people." Said Winston Churchill (according to one report): Wallace is "a crypto-Communist --one who has not got the courage to explain the destination for which he is making."* Wallace's retort: "I am a progressive Tory."

Wrote the Manchester Guardian: "He has told us a great deal of his hopes and aspirations (which, for the most part, we share), but very little about what he would do, for instance, if he were in General Marshall's place in Moscow. ... As an apostle of One World, Mr. Wallace seems a little clumsy."

The Silken Curtain. In Sweden, where Wallace hopped next, he was received by a choir singing the U.S. national anthem. Ac Stockholm University's auditorium, a crowd of 1,000 people fought to get in for an hour before Wallace was scheduled to speak. But Wallace had gone to another auditorium, where a handful of people were waiting for another speaker, and started to speak before someone found him. There was something about Henry Wallace that bred disorder--even among the orderly Swedes.

Jumping over to Oslo, Wallace complained that, in the U.S., his speeches were ignored or scanted. Said he: "I broke through that silken curtain by coming to Europe. It was worth the trip."

Behind the silken curtain, indignation changed to indifference. Dr. Gallup's pollsters found that Wallace's following among Democrats had dropped from 24% a year ago to a lowly 9%. Boomed Senator Arthur Vandenberg: "I am not interested in itinerant saboteurs."

* Next day, the record was corrected--Churchill had said only that Wallace had "foregathered with . . . crypto-Communists." Rio de Janeiro was startled when a translator's error produced the headline: "Churchill Says Wallace Is Communists' Christ."

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