Gen. Smith Praises Russian Army But Advises Firmness in Dealings

New Envoy Calls for Lasting Accord, but Suggests the Soviet Must Note Limits Beyond Which We Cannot Yield

Praise of the Red armies in the war and of Russia’s willingness to work for world peace was coupled last night by Lieut. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, American Ambassador-designate to Russia, with an implied warning to the Russians to recognize lines beyond which we cannot go.

General Smith headed a list of notable speakers at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in celebration of Red Army Day. […]

General Smith reviewed the Russian Army’s accomplishments during the war, told how Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Marshal Joseph Stalin had cooperated in securing the final defeat of the German war machine, and then made an indirect reference to the atomic bomb by saying: “The war which has just ended inflicted wounds on the world which will take a century to heal. The alliance between the soldier and the scientist is producing new methods of destruction which it is doubtful if civilization could survive. To insure that no such catastrophe will occur again, the Soviet Government had joined with us and with other peace-loving peoples to develop lasting formulas as international good-will and understanding through the medium of the United Nations Organization, in which all our hopes are now centered.”

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Russian Lauds Coalition

General [Ilia M.] Sarayev, [Soviet military attaché in Washington] declared that the war was a test for the people of the Soviet Union and proved their devotion to their motherland. It proved also, he declared, “that the progressive coalition of the great powers was essential for the accomplishment of victory and further maintenance of peace and security in the post-war period, and it strengthened the friendship between our two peoples which ought to be the very foundation of post-war cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States.”

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