A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
CONVERSATION with the members ok the Soviet delegation now in England is singularly interesting. The delegates come from various parts of Russia and only one of them speaks English with any fluency, but the party has been admirably equipped with interpreters, largely from the Cambridge School of Slavonic Studies. The visit they paid to Portsmouth on Wednesday to see the Navy impressed them greatly, but I gather that the centre of attraction was H.M.S. Victory,' for Nelson, it seems, is regarded with venera- tion in Russia. That Mr. Eden, an Opposition leader, should be found in an honoured place at a dinner given by Mr. Attlee was found incomprehensible, and the choice of a royal palace by a Labour Prime Minister for the entertainment of his Communist guests caused more perplexity. I was told that the B.B.C. Russian broadcasts are listened to with avidity throughout Russia by everyone who has suitable receiving-sets, and the complaint is that there are not more of them. Why, it is asked, should so many more hours be given to Germany than to Russia? What I found most interesting was the answer to a question I put to perhaps the most cultured member of the party. What, I asked him, had interested him most of the many things he had seen in England? He replied, after only a moment's reflection, " the portrait of George Washington in the National Gallery," going on to explain that to hang in our national collection the picture of a British subject who had fought against us and won his country's independence seemed to him to have both a serious and a humorous aspect. I observed that he had pene- trated to the very heart of the British characteristic of toleration.
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