Evening star., 1948-04-18

Are KeOHy
Nice People
A RUSSIAN JOURNAL
BY John Steinbeck. With Pic
lures by Robert Capa. Viking
Press, $375)
Reviewed by
CARTER BROOK JONES
Mr.. Steinbeck and Mr.. Capa,
bored and at loose ends, were
talking at a New York bar.
With Russia so much in the
news, what, they wondered, were
the Russian people of today
like-what did they wear and
eat, what did they talk about,
how did they amuse themselves?
Not Stain, not Molotov, not the
policy makers, not the party mis-
Sionaries who convert unbellevers
III
persuasion of bombers and machine
guns. They wanted to know about
the average person, the artisan, the
clerk, the farmer.
From this casual talk resulted a
decidedly unusual trip to Russia.
The novelist and the photographer
arrived in Moscow with a request
that amazed and momentarily baf-
fed Kremlin officials. They didn't
ask to see a single important per-
son. They asked nothing about the
government. They simply wanted
to travel about the country seeing
people. They had come to get
what our newspapers used to call
a interest story and now de-
scribed as simply feature.
Objective Reporters.
At the suggestion of resident
American correspondents, they
didn't have themselves accredited
as newspapermen, for as such they
probably wouldn't have been al
lowed to travel out of Moscow. They
conferred at Voks, the cultural rela-
tions organization. They hadn't
come, they explained, to write IA
vorably or unfavorably, but to write
as objective reporters, describing in
words and pictures what they saw.
Voks was hesitant, little skeptical,
but finally consented. The Stein
beck-Capa team was assigned In
terpreters and given clearance to
travel and see what they wanted.
1t seems to me that the collabo-
rators have accomplished what they
set out to do. Their book, with its
obvious limitations, is objective, i'm
partial. Mr.. Steinbeck describes
how at least some Russians live
work and play. Mr.. Capa, the most
famous photographer to come out
of the war, took pictures that ad-
mirably complement the text. There
is charm and sly humor in the
writing and often in the pictures.
Plenty To Eat.
They found the Moscow people
tense, preoccupied, seldom laughing
The Ukraine was still devastated by
the war, but gathering in a big
harvest. Georgia, with its noun
tains and tropical valleys, facing
the Black Sea, is untouched by the
war. 1t was luscious with fruit
aud flowers, and its people were gay.
There seemed to be plenty to eat
everywhere; the visitors were almost
killed with food and vodka. Ger
tainly they put on show for
the Americans, says Mr.. Steinbeck.
What hospitable farmers or town
folk wouldn't?
I'VE found, as we had suspected
he concludes, that the Russian
people are people, and, as with
other people, that they are very
nice. The ones We met had a
hatred of war. they wanted the
same things all people want-good
lives, increased comfort, security
and peace"
Mr.. Steinbeck adds: "We know
that this journal will not be salts
factory either to the ecclesiastical
Left nor the lumpen Right. The
first will say it is anti-Russian
the second that it is pro-Russian
Surely, it is superficial, and how
could it be otherwise? We have
no conclusions to draw. except Rus
sian people are like all other peo-
pie in the world. Some bad ones
there are surely, but by far the
greatest number are very good"
PARRIS MITCHELL OF
KINGS ROW
BY Henry and Katherine Bella
mann. (Sinon & Schuster, So
People who are as alive as any of
your friends inhabit this novel of a
young doctor who brought the new
psychiatry to a small Middle West
ern town in the period of the First
World War. And Kings Row itself
has an almost palpable personality
as the crisp pages mirror its moods
and kinds of life.
Mr.. and Mrs. Bellamann had
planned trilogy, bringing this
town from the turn of the century
to the present. The first book
Kings Row. published in 1910. was
highly successful. They were at work
on the second volume when Mr.. Bel
lamann died. His widow completed
it. Recognizing the fate that so
often befalls 'sequels,' she explains
in her foreword, Il hasten to say
that this is not sequel, but a
continuation of the story of the
town, introducing many new char
sCters and situations"
DR.. Paris Mitchell had studied in
Vienna, and he returned to his home
town to join the staff of the State
mental hospital located there. DR..
Nolan, head of the hospital, had
been schooled in the old way OF
giving the insane little more than
cuStodial care, but he was receptive
to the new. and he turned the young
pSychiatriSt loose with carte blanche
to modernize the treatment. The
two became devoted friends.
On the Wrong Side.
y