27 JUNE 1958, Page 7

I HAVE BEEN TOLD that Stalin's question about the Pope's

military strength was addressed to Laval in 1935. In May of that year Laval went to Moscow just after the Franco-Russian mutual assistance treaty had been signed, and he is said to have then asked Stalin to adopt a more friendly attitude to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in order to make the treaty more palatable to French Catholic opinion. It was in reply to this request, the story runs, that Stalin asked, 'How many divisions has the Pope?' Nobody seems to have any good reason for believing that Stalin asked the same question about de Gaulle, and I do not think he was the man to repeat his mots even at ten-yearly intervals.