NEWS FROM RUSSIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,-In your " News of the Week " you refer to the letter in The Times, in which Lord Revelstoke appeals for the abandonnient of personal and political prejudice in the approach to the problem of relations with Russia. It scents to me that the major difficulty is caused by the scarcity of news from Russia—unless one includes dull statistics informing the world how far the State Plan succeeded in one province and failed in another, what locomotives were built here.or repaired there. - The Times itself is, I understand, without a correspondent in Moscow. The principal British news agency, Reuters, supplying a service to every daily newspaper in the country, is not. represented in Moscow. Reuters relics on the official Soviet agency, Tass, and however good that may be, it is not it happy medium for the collection and transmission of news tin- British newspapers. This immense continent is really deserv- ing of a trained British. journalist (a half-dozen if possiblek who speaks the language. It is not so difficult a language that it cannot' ipe learnt in less than a year. It would pay some newspaper to send a man to learn the language and then begin to—work! This would be better than asking bins to be towed everywhere by an interpreter:7.f am, Sir, &e., [Mr. Walter Duranty's article in the Spectator of February 13th, 1982, on the inadequacy of the news reaching this country from Russia, may be recalled.—En., Spectator.]
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