Foreign News: Sovietdom Penetrated

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The small, snug Berlin flat of Sinclair Lewis was devoted, for the afternoon, to cocktails, beer and tea. The guests, including famed Rosamond (The Miracle) Pinchot, toasted diversely in all three beverages a petite and pretty black-haired woman who would soon be off adventurously to Moscow. She was Dorothy Thompson, the clever, penetrating Berlin correspondent of the New York Evening Post and Philadelphia Public Ledger, which are owned by Sateveposter Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis. As she sat, nibbling an olive from the depths of her cocktail, Miss Thompson (divorced) looked pleasantly incapable of delving into Soviet Russia and returning to set down her experiences and observations in almost 100,000 businesslike words.

A few nights after the small, snug tea Dorothy Thompson looked even less the curt, mannish newshawk which some imagine her as she danced, in a low-cut gown, with Sinclair Lewis at a smart Berlin night bar. Before the week was out, however, she was indubitably in Moscow and remained there during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Bolshevist regime. The exhaustive report of petite correspondent Dorothy Thompson has now reached the U. S. in its entirety and appeared in the papers which she serves. No sooner was it off the press, however, than a similar report was issued in book form* by famed Ivy Ledbetter Lee, suave discerning public relations counsel to the John D. Rockefellers, père et fils. Mr. Lee's visit to Moscow antedated that of Miss Thompson by only a few months. Of remarkable significance is the fact neither has written anything of Soviet Russia which contradicts the other.

Still more interesting is the fact that a correspondent with the known prestige of Miss Thompson seemingly could not obtain interviews with the high officials of the Soviet State, whereas Publicist Lee appears to have carried Rockefeller or perhaps Harriman credentials which opened every door except that of Comrade Josef Stalin, the dour, seclusive Soviet Dictator who is never interviewed.

Since Observers Thompson & Lee perfectly supplement one another it is not difficult to draw from their work a synthesis, a symposium:

Marriage. Both commentators thoroughly explode the myth that women have ever been "nationalized" in Soviet Russia. Both note the extreme simplicity with which marriage and divorce are accomplished by mere registration of intent before the authorities. Quotes Mr. Lee from the Soviet Government Code: "Children of unmarried parents enjoy the same rights as the children of legally married persons."

Miss Thompson, probing deeper, declares: "If [a woman] is about to have a child and does not want it she can get rid of it legally, and, if the State considers her reason adequate, in a free clinic. . . .

"A woman about to have a child can file with the People's court three months before its birth the name of the father. If he does not protest it is taken for granted that he is the father and he is held, equally with the mother, responsible for the child's support. . . . The original Communist theory that the State should be responsible for children has been abandoned. It is still held [only] by such champions of free love as Alexandra Kollontai . . . now [Soviet] Minister to Norway (TIME, Dec. 19)."