CANADA: The Ham in the Sandwich

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Canada's peripatetic External Affairs Chief Lester Bowles ("Mike") Pearson, bandying spirit-of-Geneva small talk with Soviet big shots during a social visit to Moscow last week, clinked champagne glasses with Deputy Premier Lazar Kaganovitch and pitched a slow-curve bon mot: "We in Canada have an interesting geographical position in the world—between the Soviet Union and the United States . . . You might say we are the ham in the sandwich." Suggested Kaganovitch politely: "Or perhaps a good bridge?" "Well," agreed Pearson, "perhaps that's a nicer way of putting it."