n, concluded
to the mutual satisfaction of the "high contracting parties."

When we returned to the living room, the debate about the freedom of
the press was still continuing. But the two sides had exchanged
places. Gribatchov was the one who led the attack now; the idea of
exchanging articles with _The New Republic_ had gradually excited him.
Publisher Harrison, on the contrary, was taking a defensive stand: he
was already foreseeing numerous difficulties obstructing the
materialization of his project. The unionist leader was sitting on the
sofa next to them. He was a tall man with a pale face with an ironical
expression, and he was gently mocking the discomfited publisher.
"Really, why shouldn't there be an exchange of articles with a Russian
paper?"

So finally they came to no conclusion at all.

We were taking our seats in the car when David manfully shook hands
with me and suddenly asked: "Maybe you will write from Moscow a
contribution for publication in _The Green Spring-Menemsha Gazette_?
Our magazine will gladly publish it, I can promise you."

My negotiations with the editors of the _Gazette_ appeared to be more
fruitful than the ones Gribatchov had had with _The New Republic_.

JULY 16, 1956

Editors' Note:

There are, of course, some errors in Mr. Polevoy's story. Many are
due, as he notes, to the fact that parts of the conversation were
conducted through dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds. Bill
Seward, the youthful proprietor of Menemsha's post office and store,
for example, may not recognize himself as the ancient Mr. Zur, and the
author of Cassandra Bobble, a fictional caricature of society
columnists, will be surprised to see her creation re-emerge in Russian
as Xandra Babel the neighbor's girl reporter. More substantial, in the
editor's opinion, is his view that it was Mr. Gribatchov and not Mr.
Harrison who doubted the practicality of an exchange of articles. And
yet as many errors of detail and interpretation would no doubt be
found were we to describe an evening spent in Mr. Polevoy's villa
outside Moscow. As far as the general tone of Mr. Polevoy's account is
concerned we cannot complain.

Mr. Polevoy, after all, is describing an evening in the home of an
opponent of the political administration in power. Soviet readers learn
that it is a comfortable place, lived in by a family substantially
free from fear. The author refers in a mocking way to the shadow of
John Foster Dull