RUSSIA: Bullitt to Moscow

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Because Josef Stalin had never deigned to receive the Ambassador of a capitalist power, Moscow waited curiously to see whether he would shake hands with President Roosevelt's alert and smiling Ambassador William Christian Bullitt. As the train carrying Mr. Bullitt and nine-year-old daughter Anne rolled from Poland into Russia this week he was met at the frontier by undersecretaries of the Soviet Foreign Office who pointed out that so much honor had never been done by the Soviet Government to a foreign diplomat before. Banqueted on the spot in the frontier railway station, Guest Bullitt and his Red hosts discreetly clinked glasses in a "silent toast," then sped in a private car to Moscow (350 miles).

Greeted on arrival by higher Foreign Office functionaries and by Soviet Ambassador to the U. S. Alexander Troyanovsky, Mr. Bullitt whirled off to the National Hotel where he smartly doffed his grey fedora to what Russians called "the first American flag flown officially in Moscow since the Revolution." To correspondents the Ambassador explained that he was on a flying visit, would pick a building to become the U. S. Embassy, return to Washington and later journey back to Moscow with an Embassy staff. While he is away in the U. S., said Ambassador Bullitt, there will be no U. S. diplomatic representative in Moscow.