Peace Maker?

Years have passed since any member of the Soviet Council of People's Commissars has received any foreign journalist, and thus last week the Moscow corps of correspondents was highly excited by an invitation to confer with Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff in his Louis XV office which looks out across the street at the Secret Political Police building.

In the soundproof police cellars had just been executed last week the 18 Old Bolsheviks condemned at Moscow's latest blood-purge trial (TIME, March 21. et ante) and one of the dead was Nikolai Krestinsky, up to a few months ago First Vice-Commissar of Foreign Affairs. In the past twelve months Commissar Litvinoff has also suffered the execution or disappearance of nearly all the great figures of Soviet diplomacy, including the Soviet Union's chief expert on Near & Far East affairs, Leo Karakhan, and several Soviet diplomats have fled abroad to denounce Communism & Stalin. Moscow papers had just accused of "wrecking" Nikolai Krylenko, famed Soviet Prosecutor at the earlier purge trials, thus grooming him to be made the next star traitor. The press also announced the execution after star chamber trials last week of the Metropolitan of Gorki and an unspecified "number of other clergymen." Thus, last week the invitation from Litvinoff had every element of drama.

The Foreign Commissar, in welcoming his journalist guests, announced that the U. S. S. R. is about to invite the U. S., the United Kingdom. France and other democratic countries to a general Collective Security Conference to which the U. S. S. R. will not invite Germany, Italy or Japan.

"The Soviet Government," said Maxim Litvinoff, "being cognizant . . . of its obligations under the League Covenant and the Briand-Kellogg Pact, and under the treaties of mutual assistance concluded with France and Czechoslovakia . . . is ready . . . to participate in collective actions that would be decided upon jointly with it and that would aim at checking the further development of aggression and at eliminating an aggravated danger of a new world massacre." I.e., Commissar Litvinoff was not offering direct, immediate Soviet aid in case of need to Czechoslovakia, such as Moscow sent to Madrid.

In London and in Washington immediate official reaction, while guarded, was definite that neither the United Kingdom nor the U. S. view with favor any conference upon Collective Security from which some of the world's most powerful states would be excluded.

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