The Daily Alaska empire., 1945-06-26
The Human Touch
Washington Post)

(WaSnngtOn POSu)
 Our friends and allies, the Russians, to have made very little progress in their effort to adjust themselves to the methods manners and values of the press under democracy it is conceived and as it prevails in western Europe and the United States As
 if there not enough trouble the Polish ques ton the Soviet Foreign Office has chosen to raise diplomatic incident article appearing in a Swedish magazine called Obs. The Russians asked that entire edition of the magazine, containing an article they considered scandalous be confscated and destroyed. The Swedish government, of course, re-
 fused but expressed polite regret that the article had given offense and said that this not at all the intention
 The article was called Steel Man, which of course, is straight translation of the name Stalin but is also the designation of celebrated Swedish comic strip character. The author appears to have under taken to explain in rather gay and amusing vein
 the place occupied by the great Russian leader in the minds and hearts of the Russian masses It ascribed his power and influence them to the proverbial Russian hagolatry, asserting that Stalin has some thing like the status of saint and that the Russians always like certain consciousness in their saints Thus said Obs it injures Staln in the eyes of his people when they hear of the Marshas gargantuan feats at table or at the bowl how
 after night of heavy feasting and drinking he drove back to the Kremln happily shooting off his revolver or how The hoped up on table and danced among the glasses" how "he let his happy feeling be in creased by another girl"
 Two questions immediately suggest themselves concerning the uproar in Moscow this article. One is why the Russians did not realize that their protest would promptly cause excerpts from the article to be cabled to the United States and various other countries The other question is why the Russians have the wisdom of allowing correspondents at Moscow to send out articles in the very vein Don't they realize that such stories whether truth fable are worth millions and millions of rubles in export good will? The American conception of Marshal Stalin, which prevailed until very recently, based largely on what saw in the movies read in ascetic personality who spends all his waking hours at his desk directing the course of amazingly compli cated domestic policy and even more complicated foreign policy and by way of relaxation recreation writes erudite but heavy poemcs abstruse points of Marxist theology. As he is thus conceived, Amer jeans respect and admire Marshal Stan, but they don't exactly to him. But this playful Stan, who is just big grown-up boy like the rest of us, who has hilarious moments in which he dances table between vodka glasses exuberanty shoots up the town like cowboy in the films, is something we can understand and enjoy much the Russians can though we may wonder if such strenuous pleas ures are really quite good for him at his age.
 Any Hollywood press agent any professional American shirt suffer could explain these things to the Russian Foreign Office, if given half chance. We glad to hear that lendlease to Russia is not to be closed off, after all, for a shipoad of firsrate American publicity specialists would at this point, be worth to the Kremlin than whole convoy of jeeps, tanks and planes