"LET US BE FRIENDS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 369, 19 July 1946, Page 21

"LET US BE FRIENDS"

Visit By SovierT Epirors To Tue UNITED STATES fF the atomic bomb is still World Shadow Number One, the relations of America and Britain with Russia are the biggest anxiety after the bomb. «In many ways, too, one worry depends on the other. Any sign therefore that Russia wants to avoid a rupture is encouraging, so we reprint from the "Editor and Publisher" this condensed account of a recent meeting between American and Russian editors.

HE 23rd annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington (April 18-20) welcomed three distinguished Russian editors as special guests, who were cheered by more than 300 members, the largest attendance in the Society’s history, for their frankness and friendliness, Although there was a wide variance of opinion between the Russian and U.S. editors on what constitutes a free press,

the meeting was historic. No agreement was reached between the two groups on any subject-it was not intended there should be. The visiting editors stated, however, that they believed in the exchange of information and would welcome more U.S. correspondents in Russia. They said that visas were not their business, but that "they would raise the question of this interchange of correspondents on a broader base as soon as they got back to Russia. The three Russian guests, who each made brief statements to the Society and later subjected themselves to a ques-

tion and answer period, were: General Mikhail Romanovich Galaktionov, military editor of Pravda; Ilya Grigorevich Ehrenburg, editorial staff of Izvestia; and Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, editorial staff of Red Star. Here are some extracts from their speeches and comments. They spoke through an interpreter and were introduced at two sessions by Wilbur Forrest, New York Herald Tribune, and Erwin Cunham, Christian Science Monitor, whe conversed with them in French.