Foreign News: Rolling Miller

In The Moscow News, only English language paper in the Soviet capital, appear frequent letters from U. S. technicians in Russia, most of a satisfied, some of an exultant tone. Different were tidings which Mechanical Engineer Philip Harty of Newark, N. J. brought last week when he returned with his spouse from a rolling mill job in the Ukraine.

Said he: "The Five-Year Plan is not collapsing, but has collapsed. The people are in rags. There is depression everywhere. The only ones who are satisfied are those of the younger generation, who have been taught the Soviet ideas from the start. . . .

"The workers are without discipline. As a superintendent I could not discharge men because they were incompetent. If I learned one name in Russia it was their equivalent for 'capitalist' for it was hurled at both my wife and myself wherever we went. ... In the industrial area where I was stationed the trains were working from 18 to 20 hours behind schedule.

"The hospital I went to when I was ill was so filthy that after a couple of days on milk and hard black bread I went back to my own place. The doctors were kids. I have never seen any place so dirty as that hospital. . . . How anything fine or good can come from such squalor and misery and defeat is more than I can understand."

Russia's trade representatives in Manhattan, Amtorg Trading Corp., promptly announced that on Jan. 23 they received a cable from Moscow concerning Mr. Harty: "This man was fired for unbecoming behavior."