Once Too Often

"A diplomat's words must have no relations to actions--otherwise what kind of diplomat is he?" Joseph Stalin once wrote. "Good words are a mask for the concealment of bad deeds. Sincere diplomats are no more possible than dry water or wooden iron."

Joseph Stalin had used good words in a statement which he gave out to the world last week in the obvious hope that they would be accepted as an offer of peace. His real purpose quickly became clear. The good words had been timed to present Soviet Russia as a seeker of peace at the moment when the Western nations were concluding an alliance against Soviet aggression. Russia thus hoped to make the defensive North Atlantic pact look like an offensive act, and perhaps an unnecessary one. But while giving soft answers to a U.S. correspondent's questions, Russia at the same time was making big bear noises at little Norway (see INTERNATIONAL).

In Frankfurt, a German girl discussed Stalin's peaceful hints. Said she wistfully: "Every time the Russians talk like that my heart jumps with hope ... I know, I know. But I can't help it if the Russians know the way my heart works." The point was that she knew better than what her heart told her. Except for the willfully blind and the incurably credulous, few of the world's people could any longer believe in what the Russians promised, any more than they could believe in dry water or wooden iron.

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