(See front cover)
Last week U. S. recognition of Soviet Russia looked nearer than at any time since diplomatic relations ceased in 1917. For the first time in 16 years a U. S. President formally admitted the existence of a nation of 160,000,000 inhabitants when last May Franklin Roosevelt included U. S. S. R. in his world-circling appeal for peace. For the first time in 16 years a Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs did business as an equal with U. S. statesmen when last month Maxim Maximovich Litvinov met Assistant Secretary of State Moley at the London Economic Conference. For the first time in 16 years U. S. trade with Russia was officially promoted when last fortnight Reconstruction Finance Corp. made some $4,000,000 available for exporting cotton to U. S. S. R. And for the first time in 16 years a U. S. Minister had definite instructions from the White House to keep his eye peeled to the possibilities of resuming U. S.-Soviet relations when last week Laurence Adolf Steinhardt sailed out of New York to assume his new looking & listening post at Stockholm.
Though the die-hard clamor against Russian recognition has largely died down since March 4, the public mind is still foggy with uncertainties as to just what that step would mean for the U. S. economically and politically. A new market for U. S. goods would open—but how & why and when and where? In an effort to answer such questions for the puzzled businessman there came into being in Philadelphia last week a new investigating agency sponsored by the American Foundation. It was called the Committee on Russian-American Relations and its membership included such potent figures as Morgan-Partner Thomas W. Lament, whose son Corliss is a near-Communist; Harvard Economist Frank W. Taussig; Lawyer Paul D. Cravath, a Russian recognitionist; President James D. Mooney of General Motors Export Co., whose trading field is the world at large; Dean Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School, a liberal of the first water; Engineer Hugh L. Cooper who built the Dnieprostroy Dam for U. S. S. R. Modestly buried away in the middle of the committee list was the name of its chairman and sponsor—Curtis Bok.
To all literate U. S. citizens that combination of names could suggest only one thing—the great Philadelphia publishing family long headed by Cyrus H. K. Curtis and well served by his son-in-law, Edward William Bok. Mr. Bok died in 1930, Mr. Curtis last month. To Curtis Bok, able grandson of an able grandfather, able son of an able father, passed the prestige and tradition and responsibility, if not the immediate wealth of the Curtis-Bok family. But when for the first time since his succession Curtis Bok stepped into the limelight to perform an important act of public service, it was not as the scion of the rulers of a huge publishing empire but as a stubbornly independent individual doing what he considered his independent duty.