St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1945-05-25

day and divide responsibility for the
welt and the Russians. Mrs. R. is
off the front page now, so he just
bundles 'em all up and hands them
over to Stain.
try to keep my women folk
from reading the Sokolsky column.
Ordinarily it's not hard job, since
they are not greatly interested in
the editorial page anyway. But on
May 1 the word prayer" was in
the caption, "lack of prayer" to be
exact. That settled it; they read it.
Nothing interests my women folk
more than prayer, prayer being to
them, SO it seems, about the only
thing that might change the Lord
and Masters ways of thinking. And
a lack of prayer, at any point where
it might cOnceivably fit in, throws
them into protest. But despite their
good intentions, from which the
Lord knows 1 have prOfited i'm
measurably through many years.
I'm sorry they got hold of that self
righteous blurb of SOkOlsky's. That
man can, and does, poison the minds
of far less innocent souls than my
women folk.
Molotov, as the conference open
ed, insisted that the craftsmanship
rotate among the four most active
powers, America, China, England
and Russia. Sokolsky, along with
others I've read, looks upon, this
insistence as a diplomatic gaucherie
on the Russians part, due to their
ignorance of the amenities because
of their lack of diplomatic and
social contacts since the replace
ment of the aristocrats of old Rus
STA by the present regime, from
Kerensky through Lenin to Stain.
THAT" Sokolsky says, explains
Molotov's bad manners" because, so
it seems to me, he insisted upon
adhering to the idea that this is in
fact as well as in fancy a world con-
ference.
That Molotov's manners may
have been unusual is a quite patent
fact; that they were "bad" depends
very much on the point of view.
Undoubtedly Sokolsky's point of
view remains pointed and sunken
in the old age concept of diplo-
matte procedure symbolized cen
turtles ago, and adhered to pretty
much since then, on the "Field of
the Cloth of Gold," with all its
pageantry and punctilious pomp,
brought up to modern streamlined
standards of course, as the proper
setting for a conference to bring
peace and justice into this distract
ed world of 1916.
MR.. SOKOLSKY FEELS THAT
A PRAYER TO GOD should since
all those attending worship Him
Who is common to US all. heartily
agree with the latter clause, only I
myself would prefer and always do
pray to Jesus, he having once been
incarnated like myself and hence
more close and comprehensive to
me. But when Sokolsky cites as a
reputable example, how we open
every session of our congress with
prayer, he fails to cite that no less
remarkable fact that, in spite of the
prayers, southern senators who are
past masters in the art of public
praying and church going, throw
the very essence of Jesus teachings
to the winds in preparation to fill
buster out of existence every piece
of legislation that comes up in
support of them.
SOkOlsky maintains that the
permanent craftsmanship belongs,
through diplomatic courtesy, to the
host nation. And there he is pa
thetically wrong and behind in his
thinking. There is no host to this
conference, nor should there be, in
the social sense that SOkOlsky sug-
gests. This is a world conference.
It could just as well have met as
far as the world in general is con-
cerned and certainly as far as the
Russians seem concerned, at any
one of the better GASES Of the Sa-
hara desert.
1t is not a conference in which
the minds of the delegates should
be hampered, and the expression
of their hopes and aspirations for
peace and justice, be smothered
under the soft blankets of social
and diplomatic etiquettes and
amenities. They are there to seek
earnestly for some modus operandi
for decent living in this shrinking
world of 1915, not in the days Of
Henry.
Mr.. Sokolsky, along with others
of his ilk, are now rationalizing the
situation by stressing the unim-
portance of the craftsmanship. The
position is, they say, a mere
courtesy, having small bearing on
the final outcome of the conference.
This, on my word, is a strange con-
clusion for men familiar with the
workings of the American Govern
ment to draw.
Ours is a government by COM
mitteeS and the chairman is bv far