Dim-Out

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 320, 10 August 1945, Page 8

Dim-Out

HE delegation that left for Moscow last year was surrounded by an almost unprecedented excitement and a. curiosity that has not yet been satisfied. English newspapers and their correspondents have recently become vitriolic about the difficulty of getting news out of Russia, and with this in mind, when I heard that Alexander Werth, the BBC's representative, was to speak on the work

of the Australian and New Zealand delegations in Moscow, I did not expect to hear anything very illuminating. Nor did I. There is possibly little to tell so far. Times are, as he pointed out, too abnormal for trade openings; scientific cooperation, already begun by the longerestablished Australian delegation, would seem to be the most immediately profitable opening. Mr. Costello, of New Zealand, was the first British diplomat to enter Poland, where he arranged for release of prisoners. Mrs. Boswell, during a country drive, had a long technical discussion with a farmer who was driving home a cow he had bought at the market, and convinced him he had a bargain. Our delegation has frequent contacts with those from Great Britain and Canada, and is at last moving out of its hotel into a house which has been allotted to it. It was a talk that may have disappointed many interested people, both in content and in length (8 minutes only). We must remind ourselves that we sent an able delegation who will work hard and seize every opportunity; that more important than the buying or selling of a few hundred tons _ of linen, butter or hides is the necessity for us to understand and to be understood by the Russians. This will take more time and more people than we have already allotted to it, but it would go ahead more quickly if the public received more frequent and more comprehensive reports.